I've heard it suggested that we(humans) have stopped evolving because now we are all selected(therefor darwins survival of the fittest proccess has stopped in its tracks for us- the human race!.). I think this is total trash!. I think as long as our greed for more than our fair share along with our violent hatred for our fellow man is in full force; there are still winners and loosers among our species- therefor natural selection is alive and well!.
Infact I think the ending of the process of evolution and the ending of war, greed, hunger etc will occur at the same time(but is this possible EVER while we are all competing for the earths same finite resources?).
Any thoughts?.

I think that's about right Einstein...only I think it is the 'virus' which dominates and so long as it is predatory to humans...how could we stop evolving?

uhm..peopel are being born with 'disabbltis' or mutations witch i see as evulation, i heard rumors of 6 girls beign born without eyes, and i belive that there goign to be intulectualy adveanced then avrage humanilty, and that thell see with there mind!

so do you think that as we use our own brain less and less because we'll have supercomputers doing it for us that we will retroactively dumb down or will we become increasing intelligent on average as more and more knowledge is gained...but then wont that require larger brain capacity/volume? Is there a limit on what we can know because there is a limit on how large our brains can get without evolving into something no longer human...or rather homo sapien sapiens?

The problem with that theory is that less educated people are normally the ones to have a lot of children.

I think that evolution has slowed greatly for us. Now that we use medicine and technology to save weaker people our evolutionary fate is that of sickness and frailness.

In 1 million years I see our descendants looking somewhat like the greys.

I see them more like (Was it Jabba the Hud? In star wars?). All social trends show we are becoming more obese as a rule. Greys are skinny we won't be like that. We will be Huuuuuuge!

Ben

Yep but what about brain volume????

I belive brain capacity will hold at its current level but the number of synapses and neural connection etc will fall. Having worked in this field (Trying to regenerate closed connections) I can assure you that only continued use makes them viable. In short as we create a world where less 'thinking' is needed we will have heads full of nothing.

Ben

so you think we'll dumb down rather than evolve to larger brains because of increased knowledge..

LOL I see your point

There are already ways to make fat people skinny... With the highly nutritious foods of the future, they will probably find a way to remove all body fat since it is not needed.




Stupid people are still breeding all the time. The chances for a less intelligent person to spread around their seed are greater then a learned one. I'm not saying that intelligent people don't have kids, I'm just saying that it is not proportional.

Still, with evolution, if two smart people do not use their brain at all, and then have kids, the kids will still have the same learning potential as the parents, even if the parent's wasted it. As long as there are intelligent people, there will be a quest for knowledge.


I thought that it is the surface area that counts. If you choose not to use your brain it will make you less intelligent, but it won't hinder your children at all. They could study to their genetic potential or they will not.

I guess I shouldn't have called non educated people stupid, some of them don't have a choice... Just an afterthought...

Lenny, are you saying that less intellegent people produce less intellegent offspring?

Can a mould with a bash in it produce a symmetrical Blancmange?

Ben

PS The above is entirely dependent on the definition of 'intelligence'. I thought I better add that before getting my ass kicked.

NO! theres no limit to were peopel can rember and learn things, s age progresses mortalily 'dumbs' you down.. and were getting stupiditry and stupidry (me) as we 'need' support from supercomputer..the human brain can hold up to 50x as much as the worlds biggest supercomputer..so..humans are ALOT more advanced then we give credite for ourselfs..so baisciy i just proved that i cant stay on one track of thinking at a time!

I agree that the idea that we've stopped evolving is ludicrous. Evolution doesn't stop, as the fossil record shows. Humans are no exception.

We've gotten taller in the last few hundred years, for one thing. Go to a museum and check out the old Civil War uniforms-they're freakin' tiny! People were a lot shorter in the old days, mostly due to malnutrition. That's just one example.

Our technology's another big piece of evidence that we're actually evolving a lot quicker-more in mind than appearance. Our society's gone through quite a radical evolution-and we've gotten smarter as a result, therefore we found out about malnutrition, and now our growth isn't stunted nearly as often, at least in developed countries, anyway.

Hell, 500 years ago humans still thought the sun revolved around the earth. We were for the most part illiterate and superstitious. Then more and more great innovations started popping up, first the rennaisance, then the great awakening, and finally the industrial revolution, which we're still going through right now-we're getting more and more dependant on our own innovations, to the point where our minds and bodies clearly are changing. Our technological evolution is beginning to mingle with our physical evolution-medical science has made us healthier, automobiles and television have made us lazier, and now with the internet and cell phones and what not our lives are becoming more fast paced.

Let's just hope the evolution we're going through now isn't interfered with by our innovations in nuclear technology!! :sofahide:

There are some disturbing trends emerging Steroid. In Britian the infant mortality rate is now higher than it was during the Pre-Victorian, pre-hospital era. Does this mean that as we evolve we are increasingly likely to die in infancy in larger numbers? Or does it mean that something in our make-up at present is misunderstood in relation to current evolutionary trends? Or even still, have we created a monster?


Ben

These examples are not biological changes at all. It's all about environment. To say that we are smarter now than what we were for a couple of hundred years ago is naive. They didn't have as good an education, for one. You think the team that first consieved the cell phone invented it from scratch? Nope! They stood on the shoulders of previous inventors and reached further. They didn't invent radio signals, just to bring up one example. The only thing I know of that shows an increase at all in any form of intelligence is the IQ. It has risen through the years, but too fast to be evolutionary. Environment all the way.
Same goes for how we are taller and have better teeth than before, or are fatter. Don't mix biological evolution into this. We haven't changed much for the past 400 000 years.

I agree Dros. I do not see us changing biologically at all. I think we have evolved into what we are meant to be. The only way we will change physically is if our environment changes drastically and our bodies have to adapt to it to survive.

Only ten thousand years to go and the little toe disappears....counting!

I know what you mean Dross but in the same way that selective breeding of dogs can be seen as 'evolutionary' (We produce some new form or shape that breeds true) then so it will be with humans. It may take a little while but if Society is predominantly fat (For social reasons) just now then 5,000 years from now it will for Physiological ones. We will have 'bred true' eventually.

Ben

Society will always have problems. And it's not like we're accepting being obese as a healthy thing. But I think we will change over time, because our environment isn't currently static. But since it's not nature's choice anymore, I'd rather call it devolution. That's just how I see it.

The female Pelvis is already smaller than it was in the 1800's. Skinnies are dominating where women are concerned (Or if not skinnies in the physiological sense then certainly in the socially constructed sense). Nutrition may have backfired on us in one way....where the ease of childbirth is concerned for the female.

Ben