Just an observation

BigTex · Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 1:58 pm Post subject: Re: Just an observation

It seems to me that we ARE becoming more well adapted, but it is to an environment that is utterly artificial and ethereal.

Thus, just about the time we begin to see natural selection for greater thumb dexterity, a new Blackberry model will come out that uses the index fingers for data entry.

The natural selection I see is toward worker drones who don't question things too much, but who like the tube steak boogie and have access to surgeons who can perform c-sections.

That sort of selection would never occur in a more traditional culture that relied more or less solely on renewable resources for survival.
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VMarcHart · Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 2:05 pm Post subject: Re: Just an observation

Devin · Heavy Crude Joined: Apr 07, 2008 Posts: 202

Selection pressures and the reproductive fitness of individuals or an entire population are a completely different conversation than whether or not natural selection is occurring. The only lunacy here is the apparent insistence on conflating these concepts to support some half assed idea you obviously came up with while eating your cornflakes this morning. Making sweeping generalizations about entire periods of history without having any support for those sweeping generalizations is utterly ridiculous and fully deserving of satire.

So if you're trying to make the argument that a decline in apparent selection pressures has led to a generalized decrease in reproductive fitness of the average human being -- which is at least a potentially salient argument -- then please at least attempt to do so without sounding like a blithering idiot in the meantime. If that IS the argument you're trying to make, I think it ignores the fact that other than a few exceedingly basic things that directly impact reproductive fitness, such as sterility or death, the reproductive fitness of a generalized population is impossible to determine, except in retrospect.

The people who make this sort of argument often start with preconceived notions of what they think "fitness" is -- and, since empirical evidence is impossible to produce, circular logic is employed in its absence. "These traits make a person unfit; these people are unfit because they have these traits." You might as well say "I don't like black people because they're black" -- nevermind that "black", like "fitness", is a non-empirical construct. You could talk 'til you're blue in the face about the melanin content of the skin and IQ and brain size and racial origins, and it wouldn't matter because it's STILL a construct.

As it should be needless to say, but unfortunately isn't, this sort of conversation is utterly fruitless, since nothing at all can be concluded from it -- "Hmm, people who die in car accidents tend to be less fit for reproduction than people who do not!". Also unfortunately, this rarely seems to stop people from trying to make such ridiculous conclusions.

angryfire

mos6507 · Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 3:10 pm Post subject: Re: Just an observation

Modern society sets the bar really low on what constitutes 'fitness'. It sets a pretty strong safety net underneath us so that those who would normally not be able to function in a 'primitivist' world (like Golem) are able to live out a full lifespan and reproduce. The only genetic filteration in the first world is the choice that women exercise. Women in the end settle for what provides the most security. These days that means more Bill Gates nerds than you'd see hook up in the old days. So on that basis I'd say the gene pool is getting 'weaker'.
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VMarcHart · Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 3:16 pm Post subject: Re: Just an observation

Devin · Heavy Crude Joined: Apr 07, 2008 Posts: 202

mos6507, while your description of the current state of affairs might be accurate, though imprecise, the conclusion that the gene pool is "weaker" based on that description is fallacious. Using examples from the past of what fitness used to look like and applying that to an as-yet-unknown future scenario is that same fallacy. Selection pressures are ever-changing, and the "strength" of the current gene-pool is always yet-to-be-determined, always inconclusive.

This is no mere philosophical argument, either, the process of evolution follows the exact same indeterminate pattern. No species exists in a permanent, fixed environment -- speciation and extinction events are based on ever-changing, wholly arbitrary environmental conditions.

So unless you know the future, and I mean the WHOLE future -- or just think you know what's best -- any kind of conclusion is premature, to say the least. This is where the word "hubris" might be used appropriately.
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On edit: As a tangent, similar misunderstandings led to the idea of Social Darwinism and rationalizations for slavery and for genocide of the Native Americans. This fallacy/hubris is taken to an extreme in those who believe in using/want to use (or at least support the idea of using) eugenics to increase the fitness of the human population. Eugenics was used, at least in part, as justification for the policies of Nazi Germany, including the Holocaust.

This is not a misunderstanding with minor consequences.

Consensi · Tar Sands Joined: May 28, 2008 Posts: 86

[quote="Newfie"]

Pretorian · Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2008 12:52 am Post subject: Re: Just an observation

Pretorian · Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2008 1:00 am Post subject: Re: Just an observation

ReverseEngineer · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jul 16, 2008 Posts: 1491

The mistake being made here on all ends is the concept that Natural Selection necessarily takes place on the individula end, but really what we are talking about is NS on the collective end among social organisms.

Looked at from the aggregate perspective, human society is best looked at as a Bee Hive, with worker bees and soldier bees and queen bees etc all fulfilling roles in the society. Your society organized in such a fashion can't exist with ALL people being Kings or Queens, you need Workers and you need Soldiers. If you develop a Eugenics system and breed all Einsteins, WTF is gonna scrub the toilets the Einsteins sit on while they scheme up new Derivatives for the Stock Market? LOL.

As societies collectivized around agriculture, centralization of wealth and power developed classes of people who for the most part were bound into their class as slaves or rulers. Further specialization of roles came to be through the Trades like toolmaker, blacksmith, watchmaker etc, and the tradesmen eventually became entities unto themselves in the form of companies and then corporations. Human society in its selection process since this time has never really been about either intellect or physical prowess for the most part, its mostly about given classes breeding within their own class to perpetuate what was a successful social system as a whole for devouring the earth. Actually, Indian society really codified this in their Caste system, as did early Japanese society under the Samurai.

In terms of natural selection operating on the individual level, it only will occur when there is a sufficient die off to make those most fit to survive in a given environment the ones who will reproduce effectively. If we knock ourselves down to the stone age fast enough, this could happen for human beings again, but as it looks right now before we get down that far general species die off and the collapse of the food chain will make that impossible.

In the event the food chain does NOT collapse completely, eventually we will reform up as a social organism, but the principles don't have to be entirely the same if we retain the understanding of how we came to be this way to begin with. Society never can be perfectly egalitarian, some folks are always stronger than others, some are always smarter than others. Some roles in society have more value to more people than others do. However, you do not need or want such extreme variations in the distribution of wealth of a society that some fly around in Private Jets and plow $5000 whores every nigth while others starve and die. Societies of humans need to be limited in size and in their geographical scope on the surface of the earth. Approximately 10,000 Human Souls in any given society by my estimation, in perhaps a good area around 25,000 square miles in circumference.

This CAN be an outcome of the devastation that comes upon us now, but only if the ideas and the knowledge of what brought us to this apocalypse are retained in some fashion. That CAN happen also, because the written word can survive for millenia, as it has since the Bible was written. Just people did not listen to the important lessons written therin, and rather used religion for evil purposes for their own self aggrandizement. Its really not IMPORTANT whether Jesus was the Son of God or not, its the understanding of human nature that is important here. Its possible to understand this without reading the Bible, I came to the same conclusions simply by studying mathematics and the physical world and watching the behavior of human beings for 50 years. If I could figure this out that way, and it is congruet with what others figured out more than 2000 years ago in some cases, there MUST be some truth to it.

Reverse Engineer

VMarcHart · Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2008 5:37 am Post subject: Re: Just an observation

Consensi · Tar Sands Joined: May 28, 2008 Posts: 86

[quote="Consensi"]

VMarcHart · Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2008 5:38 am Post subject: Re: Just an observation

Newfie · Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2008 8:35 am Post subject: Re: Just an observation