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Illeix wrote:I put together a theory on this subject a few years ago. The jist of it is that human society is so good at taking care of each other that Darwin doesn't get his full cut. These bad genes are then passed on instead of dying out as per Darwin's theory.
In short, Humanitys' greatest asset is also a great weakness. Thus the tendancy towards "de-evolution".

Not really. Evolution is measured over the course of thousands of years. Modern healthcare is measured in decades.

In the timeframe needed for evolution to have had any material effect on our genes, we will have developed more or less complete control over genes.

Ketara wrote:Natural selection hasn's actually stopped. It's been postulated several times that over the course of the next few thousand years, humanity is going to split into two distinctive breeds, to be precise, the pretty intelligent ones, and the ugly stupid ones. Why is that?, you may ask.

Well, have you ever noticed that as a general rule of thumb(there will always be exceptions) attractive people marry attractive people? And intelligent people tend to marry other intelligent people? Stupid people tend to irritate intelligent people for very good reason. Anyway, the theory is that the attractives and intelligents will slowly begin to merge, and what will happen is you end up with genetic 'have's' and 'have nots'.

You don't create speciation over the course of 40 or so generations, it takes a number several orders of magnitude greater than that.

And there's no clear differentiation between intelligent and stupid, which is why despite that same effect hasn't led to smart/stupid speciation in the last few hundred thousand years.

Instead you get people in the top percentiles of 'smart' marrying people in the top and top middle percentiles, people in the top middle percentiles marrying people in the top, top middle and middle percentiles and so on. You don't have a real seperation of the two stocks, so you don't see speciation.

And that's before you get into the problems with 'smart' as a single measure. There's no general intelligence.

Ketara wrote:No, but being a science fiction writer shouldn't give a good theory any LESS weight than you'd give a good theory. In other words, pointing out he's a science fiction writer appears to be some kind of bizare statement aimed at discrediting anything he has to say.

No, but something written before we had any real understanding of evolution shouldn't be given any more weight than anything written by any old clown on the internet. Darwin believed the actual mechanics of inheritance worked through Pangenesis, the idea that every cell in the body contributed information to the reproductive cells. This is nonsense, of course, because of what we've since discovered about genes, but Darwin wasn't to know that.

Similarly, Well's idea doesn't make much sense, but he wasn't to know that at the time.


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ShumaGorath wrote:No wai. A lot can be said for the distortion of natural selection due to unnatural (however ill defined the difference really is) selection. Most geneticists will agree that mutations that are becoming more prevalent are typically exaggerated and fetishized physical attributes like large breasts (as is probably the most visible example (hurr durr)).

If we naturally desire bigger breasts, it'd be the same selection criteria that we, as natural creatures, would have been applying for thousands of years. The drive towards larger breasts was natural 100,000 years ago and it's natural now.


I think the increase in average breast size in the last two or so generations is more to do with diet, by the way.


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Ketara wrote:The notion of outer space travel occurred in Sci Fi texts long before it actually happened. Again, I fail to see how something intended as fiction does not mean that it can be reinterpreted as a logical possibility(aka, a theory).

Yeah, but the early writings on space travel had people saying that food wasn't a problem for the long journey because the only thing making people hungry was gravity, so once you were outside gravity you didn't have to eat. Which makes no sense, of course, but ideas like that were common in early fiction on travel to the moon.

When science got involved we started to see more plausible ideas on space travel. Is there any real science saying that we're going to speciate into the smart and the dumb in such a short time?


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Orlanth wrote:Much of the problems are due to the unfortunate fact that there is a survival of the unfittest going on.

Who gets help to raise large families on state benefit, achievers or underachievers?

The poor have bred more than the rich for thousands of years. And yet intelligence increases every generation.

On the height thing, I think people tend to see a tall population and assume genetics too easily. Japanese and Chinese people were always assumed to be naturally shorter, but once the Japanese diet started to include as much protein as it has in the West you quickly saw an equalisation. The same is happening in China.


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George Spiggott wrote:Anyone else seen this?

It's a great movie, but frequently misunderstood (which is quite ironic, considering).

The target of that movie, ultimately, are people who are smart enough but lazy, the devolution thing is just the trick used to put it on screen. I mean, look at the final speach;

... And there was a time in this country, a long time ago, when reading wasn't just for fags. And neither was writing. People wrote books and movies -- movies that had stories so you cared about who's ass it was and why it was farting... (snip) I know these things aren't easy to do. I'm pretty lazy myself. But you know, sometimes you have to challenge yourself, and do something that matters, cuz if you don't, you'll wind up with a hollow empty feeling inside.

Sebster, I'm not a expert in this field, and unlike many who try and argue on the internet when they have little but their opinion, and wikipedia, I'm not going to try and argue it. I simply passed on an interesting theory, that to my mind, made logical sense. Like I said, I believe I stumbled across the theory in general in relation to a text in an academic journal, so I presumed it had some legitimacy. I could try and find it for you, but to be frank, I don't feel the urge to scramble through every academic text I've read in the last three years to try and prove it on an internet debate. It's not my theory, and I honestly don't care enough.

Ketara wrote:Natural selection hasn's actually stopped. It's been postulated several times that over the course of the next few thousand years, humanity is going to split into two distinctive breeds, to be precise, the pretty intelligent ones, and the ugly stupid ones. Why is that?, you may ask.

Well, have you ever noticed that as a general rule of thumb(there will always be exceptions) attractive people marry attractive people? And intelligent people tend to marry other intelligent people? Stupid people tend to irritate intelligent people for very good reason. Anyway, the theory is that the attractives and intelligents will slowly begin to merge, and what will happen is you end up with genetic 'have's' and 'have nots'.

Of course, beauty is subjective, but the general consensus is that the more commonly seen physical traits will be the ones that manifest themselves amongst the new superior human race. So the men will be physically larger than the ones you generally get today, the women will have larger busts and so on. Those traits which enhance general attractiveness will be the ones that breed true.

It's an interesting concept, but means the short ugly stupid people on the other end kind of lose out.

i believe this. We all have that family member that seems to have come from a different family tree altogether.

Im not talking about those folks with disabilities, im talking about those perfectly normal, healthy but dumb as posts family members.

you can see most of them on youtube.

whatwhat wrote:

Ketara wrote:No, but being a science fiction writer shouldn't give a good theory any LESS weight than you'd give a good theory. In other words, pointing out he's a science fiction writer appears to be some kind of bizare statement aimed at discrediting anything he has to say.

That's not what I meant. The theory comes from The Time Machine. A piece of fiction. I'm not saying it has less weight because it's by a science fiction writer, more because it's from a piece of fiction and was not originally intended as realistic.

star trek had a reality where the doors open themselves before the invention of the automatic door, just because it was first shown in a work of fiction does not mean it can't be true


the idea of two divergent species isn't that hard to beleive, as it is already shown in nature with the african elephant as an example, it is actually made of two groups minor and major with one being smaller than the other, or brown bears, with kodiac bears being massive.


with and increase in the ability of medicine and life spans, genetic disorders will and have become more prevailent, but with selective fertilisation for couples with known problems this can be lesserned.

i can see the future humans using genetic engineering to make humanity 'better'

Ketara wrote:Sebster, I'm not a expert in this field, and unlike many who try and argue on the internet when they have little but their opinion, and wikipedia, I'm not going to try and argue it. I simply passed on an interesting theory, that to my mind, made logical sense. Like I said, I believe I stumbled across the theory in general in relation to a text in an academic journal, so I presumed it had some legitimacy. I could try and find it for you, but to be frank, I don't feel the urge to scramble through every academic text I've read in the last three years to try and prove it on an internet debate. It's not my theory, and I honestly don't care enough.

Nah, I'm not going to ask you to do that. Just think about it though, in the thousands of years we've been selectively breeding dogs we haven't forced any level of speciation into them, do you think it would happen to people in a thousand or so years without even having the deliberate breeding we've put into dogs?

It might not lead to speciation (the inability to produce viable offspring, which can then themselves breed) but it could lead to the production of obvious physical traits (like dogs and other breed animals) seperating humanity into 'breeds' much like the tau, which could lead to even greater seperation of the breeds due to them choosing not to have interbreed relationships.

although this can be quite hard to occur due to the massive divergence in factors involving how people live and who gets to have offspring. as the stupid, muscle vs. clever, beauty only really works in a 1st world setting while in 3rd world countries its very different.

it is more likely that the 3rd world will produce more people that are naturally resistant to future pathogens, due to the increase in 'kills 99.9% of microbes' in 1st world countries leading to weakened immune systems. so the future of humanity might not have 1st world countries as dominant

There was a not very funny comedy movie with Luke Wilson where he was in the army and got frozen or something and woke up hundreds of years later to find the whole world was run by morons. The only thing in the movie that made me laugh was the company slogan for Carl's Jr.. "F--k you, I'm hungry!"

Kinda sad that it seems to be coming true though. I'm just glad I won't live long enough to see it happen.

edit: didn't see the trailer above :p

ShumaGorath wrote:No wai. A lot can be said for the distortion of natural selection due to unnatural (however ill defined the difference really is) selection. Most geneticists will agree that mutations that are becoming more prevalent are typically exaggerated and fetishized physical attributes like large breasts (as is probably the most visible example (hurr durr)). The real question is whether this is still darwinian evolution or if the process as is scientifically ill defined has become something else...

Darwin already identified what you describe, it's "sexual selection". Where animals select mates based on characteristics they attribute a great worth too. It's why female peacocks choose to mate with those males that have he most 'eyes' on their feather display. There is then a pull between being well adapted for survival, and being well adapted towards attracting a mate. Obviously highly colourful and large feather displays can hamper your ability to survive on a day to day basis, but assuming you make it to mating season you are front of the queue.

I don't know who these geneticists are who will say that mutations becoming more prevalent are those for exaggerated physical attributes like large breasts. The 'value' placed on breast size like the appreciation of the human body has not even been consistent within the 20th century let alone across many centuries. Women are not evolving to have larger breasts, if breast sizes are increasing in recent times it's not evolution but a whole load of other factors.

sebster wrote:
The poor have bred more than the rich for thousands of years. And yet intelligence increases every generation.

Yep, and that's probably the best example to use if you want to illustrate the fact that genes aren't deterministic in the sense that a given human can be recreated at any stage in his life given only knowledge of his genetic code.

BluntmanDC wrote:It might not lead to speciation (the inability to produce viable offspring, which can then themselves breed) but it could lead to the production of obvious physical traits (like dogs and other breed animals) seperating humanity into 'breeds' much like the tau, which could lead to even greater seperation of the breeds due to them choosing not to have interbreed relationships.

Sure, but without seperation you only maintain that level of difference through deliberate seperation. We control which dogs breed, allowing us to create diversity. Human mate selection doesn't work that way.

it is more likely that the 3rd world will produce more people that are naturally resistant to future pathogens, due to the increase in 'kills 99.9% of microbes' in 1st world countries leading to weakened immune systems. so the future of humanity might not have 1st world countries as dominant

Again, though, given the timescale evolution works on, compared to our scientific discovery of genetics, in the time it requires any traits to become dominant

Let us all say this together: the geopolitical state of the world as it is now is irrelevant to evolution as it is conventionally conceived (there are arguments for technological evolution).

Edit: This thread is further evidence that justifying evolution's place on the global list of frequently misunderstood concepts.

dogma wrote:

sebster wrote:
The poor have bred more than the rich for thousands of years. And yet intelligence increases every generation.

Yep, and that's probably the best example to use if you want to illustrate the fact that genes aren't deterministic in the sense that a given human can be recreated at any stage in his life given only knowledge of his genetic code.

true, intelligence isn't only controlled by genetics, but linked to the 'evolution' in the understanding of teaching/storage of knowledge and the fact that IQ is inaccurate representation of being evolved, but of how able you are to exist in a 1st world, scientific orientated community, this is seen in the difference in grouping, in modern classes if you ask a child 'what is the link between a cat and a dog?' they would say 'mammal', while a class 50 years ago would say 'the dog chases the cat'


@sebster: i was putting the idea in a tight area of circumstance, although it is very clear that seperation is present in society groups, just not to the extent it was before globalisation and for different reasons, but it is safe to say that we cannot predict how society/ies act in the future, just look at the changes that have occured in under 50 years let alone 1000 years or 10000 years.

BluntmanDC wrote:
true, intelligence isn't only controlled by genetics, but linked to the 'evolution' in the understanding of teaching/storage of knowledge and the fact that IQ is inaccurate representation of being evolved, but of how able you are to exist in a 1st world, scientific orientated community, this is seen in the difference in grouping, in modern classes if you ask a child 'what is the link between a cat and a dog?' they would say 'mammal', while a class 50 years ago would say 'the dog chases the cat'

No, that's not what I'm talking about at all. Look into theories regarding the plasticine nature of the brain, and the role of the environment in governing the expression of genetic characteristics.

Genes are not like a computer program.

Howard A Treesong wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:No wai. A lot can be said for the distortion of natural selection due to unnatural (however ill defined the difference really is) selection. Most geneticists will agree that mutations that are becoming more prevalent are typically exaggerated and fetishized physical attributes like large breasts (as is probably the most visible example (hurr durr)). The real question is whether this is still darwinian evolution or if the process as is scientifically ill defined has become something else...

Darwin already identified what you describe, it's "sexual selection". Where animals select mates based on characteristics they attribute a great worth too. It's why female peacocks choose to mate with those males that have he most 'eyes' on their feather display. There is then a pull between being well adapted for survival, and being well adapted towards attracting a mate. Obviously highly colourful and large feather displays can hamper your ability to survive on a day to day basis, but assuming you make it to mating season you are front of the queue.

I don't know who these geneticists are who will say that mutations becoming more prevalent are those for exaggerated physical attributes like large breasts. The 'value' placed on breast size like the appreciation of the human body has not even been consistent within the 20th century let alone across many centuries. Women are not evolving to have larger breasts, if breast sizes are increasing in recent times it's not evolution but a whole load of other factors.

The issue there being that due to modern medicine and cultural values sexual mutations that result in mal adaption are no longer bred out by the conditions of survival, allowing them to propagate purely based on sexual attraction, away from any real survival function. That said, its an incredibly short term view (as is every possible theory on human evolution when combined with modern society) and breasts were primarily just a shorthand example (the shortening of female noses is another).

Apparently our minds are evolving rather quickly. Have you noticed how a 12yo can setup a computer, install the software just so they can play that Left4Dead game? Damn!

As for our body's though... hmm... when you let anyone breed with anyone you're gunna get some interesting offspring's.

Since humans create their own environments, adaptability through evolution to different "natural" environments is not an important survival characteristic for us.