Quake3World

There also is little selection for mates. Anybody can pass his or her genes on these days, no matter how incompetent/stupid/ugly they are. That's not how it typically works in the rest of the natural world.

There also is no limit on offspring number. Some useless dumb hick can have 15 kids, and most of them will survive somehow. Whereas a smart, successful, useful couple may only have one or two kids.
All the children will survive, leaving more hick genes in the pool.

Also, if we do any adapting, it won't be to overcome natural obstacles in our environment. It will be adapting to the easier, technology-dependent lifestyle we live.

Yes, reverse evolution. Eyes deteriorating because we don't look at objects far away anymore, awful memories because we have divices to remember things for us...

Fun stuff.

Fender wrote:

werldhed wrote:...well, maybe if we didn't do such a good job of slowing evolution in our own species, but that's a different matter...)

I've thought of that before. Our modern medicine could really end up hurting our species in the long run. If we ever perfect genetic engineering and allow it to be used on humans, that's a different story. Meanwhile, all sorts of people who wouldn't normally live until reproductive age are growing up and having kids. Our gene pool gets weaker and weaker with every passing generation. Of course diet, excersize and lifestyle are major contributors to our failing health, but you have to wonder how much of the cancer problem is due to people with really bad genes living "longer that they should."

Doesn't really matter though - that's the beauty of natural law - we CAN'T break it. There's no such thing as human interferrence with nature, because we're a part of nature. Even if we cause some kind of genetic catastrophe in our own species there will still be those who will survive and either perpetuate the species - or just die out. Either way nature wins

Ryoki wrote:Yes, reverse evolution. Eyes deteriorating because we don't look at objects far away anymore, awful memories because we have divices to remember things for us...

Fun stuff.

I was about to say that what R00k said wasn't really true. A cushy lifestyle would not cause stressors to make us adapt in an evolutionary sense. But you're right -- without the need for healthy organs, muscles, etc, it will be advantageous for us to expend less energy maintaining them. Thus, the logical parts of our brain could actually shrink with time.

Yikes.

werldhed wrote:There also is no limit on offspring number. Some useless dumb hick can have 15 kids, and most of them will survive somehow. Whereas a smart, successful, useful couple may only have one or two kids.
All the children will survive, leaving more hick genes in the pool.

i bought a flatbed off this bloke with 9 kids who joked that he was trying to get enough for a football team. his missus looked like she'd been built entirely from marshmallows and scabs. seemed like there were more than 9 of them, little feral bastards were everywhere. picked one up in an attempt to be more sociable, it didn't bite or anything but it was producing a phenomenal amount of snot (maybe a defence mechanism, like those hagfish things) and had some other sort of mucus around its eyes so i put it down again.

there was a bit of 'survival of the fittest' going on there i guess. these days most of those kids will reach adulthood (because it's illegal to kill them), but in the past they would've expected to lose several to disease, misadventure or acts of law enforcement. only one or two could've survived to pass on the stupid to future generations.

Am I just considered an uneducated wanna-be here or something?

Seriously.

so what is a semi realistic future solution for deevolution which yes i do believe is happening

Bdw3 wrote:There is also an extra muscle in the arm and one in the leg that some people have and others do not.

Palmaris longus

Fender wrote:

werldhed wrote:...well, maybe if we didn't do such a good job of slowing evolution in our own species, but that's a different matter...)

I've thought of that before. Our modern medicine could really end up hurting our species in the long run. If we ever perfect genetic engineering and allow it to be used on humans, that's a different story. Meanwhile, all sorts of people who wouldn't normally live until reproductive age are growing up and having kids. Our gene pool gets weaker and weaker with every passing generation. Of course diet, excersize and lifestyle are major contributors to our failing health, but you have to wonder how much of the cancer problem is due to people with really bad genes living "longer that they should."

Thank you for that insight, Dr. Mengele

rep wrote:

sys0p wrote:I always thought, if evolution is a fact, how come there aren't loads of half evolved things running around? Does it not work like that?

You're using mankind as your example of perfection when we're far from it.

You should know why we all have nipples, so that tells you just how inefficient and evolutionarily unfledged we are.

We have nipples for a reason. Ever heard of a prosthetic nipple? No, of course not, so imagine how stupid you'd look without nipples if you decided to become a shemale. They can't just graft them on your chest. Nature's a fucking genius.

Geebs wrote:

Bdw3 wrote:There is also an extra muscle in the arm and one in the leg that some people have and others do not.

Palmaris longus

How can I tell if I have it?

Hold one of your hands in front of you, palm up so you can see the wrist. Use your other hand to hold it in place, and flex your wrist. You should see either one or two flexor tendons become more prominent. If you see two, you've got it. The other is your finger flexors.

Palmaris longus is a flexor which inserts into the plamar fascia. It's bugger all use to us, but it's better developed in other primates and is used for hanging on to trees or somesuch.

Geebs wrote:Thank you for that insight, Dr. Mengele

predictable

Yeah, I like ya Fender, but "Living longer than they should"...what does that even mean?

Fender wrote:

Geebs wrote:Thank you for that insight, Dr. Mengele

predictable

No, seriously. Saying one gene is "weaker" than another is just plain wrong. It's an argument you usually get with people who also don't know the difference between dominant and recessive, and eugenic principles were pretty generally popular in the first half of the century. Of course people tend to try to forget that Marie Stopes, the famous feminist and sex educator (pretty sure she was Jewish, can't remember) had some views which were pretty compatible with eugenics (like neutering the poor so they wouldn't breed).

The usual guff about sickle cell trait, however, blows all of that eugenics or "strong gene/weak gene" crap clean out of the water.

cool, i have two. they're both right of the middel, not that prominent. so what superpower do i have?

LeonardoP wrote:cool, i have two. they're both right of the middel, not that prominent. so what superpower do i have?

You're an evolutionary throwback. If it helps at all, so am I

Hannibal wrote:Yeah, I like ya Fender, but "Living longer than they should"...what does that even mean?

Maybe it came off a little harsh, but I meant there are a lot of childhood conditions that were fatal just 50 years ago that aren't anymore. Some of these are from freak mutations, some are environmental, but some are genetic. We "interfere" with nature, heal these kids and they go on to have their own kids and pass along the trait. I'm not saying anything about the ethics or morality of this, just the evolutionary impact.

Geebs wrote:No, seriously. Saying one gene is "weaker" than another is just plain wrong. It's an argument you usually get with people who also don't know the difference between dominant and recessive, and eugenic principles were pretty generally popular in the first half of the century. Of course people tend to try to forget that Marie Stopes, the famous feminist and sex educator (pretty sure she was Jewish, can't remember) had some views which were pretty compatible with eugenics (like neutering the poor so they wouldn't breed).

The usual guff about sickle cell trait, however, blows all of that eugenics or "strong gene/weak gene" crap clean out of the water.

I do know the difference between dominant and recessive, but I don't know what you are talking about w/ sickle cell. Explain a bit?

Geebs wrote:

LeonardoP wrote:cool, i have two. they're both right of the middel, not that prominent. so what superpower do i have?

You're an evolutionary throwback. If it helps at all, so am I

i don't know man, i've noticed that my tree/net-climbing skills are far above average, maybe i can put this "evolutionary throwback" to good use

Fender wrote:

Hannibal wrote:Yeah, I like ya Fender, but "Living longer than they should"...what does that even mean?

Maybe it came off a little harsh, but I meant there are a lot of childhood conditions that were fatal just 50 years ago that aren't anymore. Some of these are from freak mutations, some are environmental, but some are genetic. We "interfere" with nature, heal these kids and they go on to have their own kids and pass along the trait. I'm not saying anything about the ethics or morality of this, just the evolutionary impact.

you don't have to worry bout the evolution of man. it's all in the brains now, once we fige out how our bodies work and we can improve on that we can evolve ourselves. i thought out some stuff concercning human evolution a while ago, but i cant remember because im so fucking drowsy :icon29:

zeeko wrote:so what is a semi realistic future solution for deevolution which yes i do believe is happening

Well, "deevolution" is sort of a misnomer. Evolution is just the adaptation of a species to stressors. Even if we evolve into sedentary humans, it's still progressive evolution because it is a response to the sedentary environment in which we live.

However, as Schmee said, nature always wins. For example, if we sit around inside all day, our immune systems might evolve to be less effective. Then, if an epidemic breaks out, only the selected people with immunity will survive. There's nothing we can do as individuals, but as a species, the best way to ensure evolutionary survival in the world is to expose ourselves to potential threats. But in terms of evolution, there's nothing wrong with being stupid lazy slobs, as long as it's the best way to survive in our environment. Just look at sloths. The problem will be when our environment changes; in which case it'll have to be left to nature who decides who adapts and who doesn't.

My point was just that for the most part we've removed the section factor out of the equation, which will just slow the process down. Natural selection still works in terms of preventing litters of Downs syndrome from being produced, and that sort of thing, though.

nice werldhed :icon14:, totally agree

Fender wrote:I do know the difference between dominant and recessive, but I don't know what you are talking about w/ sickle cell. Explain a bit?

Sickle cell's an inherited disorder of haemoglobin that causes red blood cells to become non-reversibly a) the wrong shape and b) non-deformable (normally red blood cells have to be flexible to squeeze through capillaries) when they're de-oxygenated. Inheritance is autosomal recessive. It means they have a chronic haemolytic anaemia. When the patient gets cold or unwell, oxygen tension tends to drop in the peripheries as they're not as well perfused. It's the same reason why your fingers tend to turn blue in the cold, but in a sickle patient, that tends to cause an onset of "sickleing" or "sickle crisis" - the red blood cells change shape and get stuck in the capillary beds, especially in the bones and joints, lung, spleen and brain. It's excruciatingly painful and they need iv rehydration and lots of very stong analgesia - the sort of condition you might think was due to "bad genes"

However, sickle cell trait (just one of the sicke genes) protects the carrier from malaria. This means that despite the devastating consequences of the homozygous condition, the heterozygous condition is evolutionarily conserved in areas where malaria is endemic, such as in Africa. Hence a so called "bad gene" saves a lot of lives at the expense of generating a few individuals with sickle cell disease.