h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Someone posted this in a thread about parenting, and I wanted to carry on the discussion so thought maybe it deserves its own:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2002/feb/03/genetics.research

>>'If you want to know what Utopia is like, just look around - this is it,' said Professor Steve Jones, of University College London, who is to present his argument at a Royal Society Edinburgh debate, 'Is Evolution Over?', next week. 'Things have simply stopped getting better, or worse, for our species.'<<

I think the end of evolution crowd make about as much sense as the end of history lot. That is, not very much. I feel it lacks imagination: there is more to natural selection than just alpha males on the savannah. In particular, it completely ignores sexual selection.

Furthermore, we know that human evolution has actually accelerated in the period since we started forming civilizations. More people living closer together, combined with increased mobility, have spread diseases far and wide. Our immune system has had to adapt in response to this.

i was going to post but i sound like a complete nazi talking about the strong and the weak and the gene pool

so i won't contribute yet i'll just lurk here in the shallow end

I don't think evolution is over (far from it!!) but modern society has certainly dulled it's impact to some extent. Remember surviving to fertility and reproducing are two of the key discriminators between successful and unsuccessful species.

How many children born today will fail to reach sexual maturity?

The ability to have sex and but use contraceptives also means selection pressures are altered, not diminished or eradicated but it is an environmental factor, I suppose.

Evolution in the whole sense of bio-diversity has never stopped as is as visible today as well as it has ever been, if not mroe so with the modern techniques of genetic studies.

In humans specifically, you can argue a tenuous case that our environment is not as susceptible to natural selection as it once was, but there are clear exceptions to this - the immunity to HIV amongst sex workers in Africa is a prime example of this. Countless numbers have been killed due to that infection, until some have a mutated code that allows them to survive - and crucially pass on those genetic mutations.

So emphatically human evolution is not over.

Some Scottish bloke who lives in London was going around saying much the same sort of thing about "boom and bust"...

It strikes me as saying that simply because we have plentiful supplies of grease that friction is over or that because we can fly gravity is over.

I think it makes an arresting title for a book but that's about its only merit.

Whilst we still have vestigal tails, and throwbacks like prehensile toes I don't think nature is through with us yet - and if this is Utopia I want my prayers back !

Seeing as evolution can only be viewed very clearly in anatomical obvious detail over millions of years, and humans have been around for a tiny fraction of half an eyeblink in geological time, I reckon it's a bit soon to be assessing the end of evolution.

I agree with Stephen Jones. Daft!

>> Furthermore, we know that human evolution has actually accelerated in the period since we started forming civilizations. More people living closer together, combined with increased mobility, have spread diseases far and wide. Our immune system has had to adapt in response to this. <<

Mmm, The Limits to growth. I have an interesting book with that title.
I had to study it at polytechnic/university.

Evolution is a dumb process. It is driven by instinct not intellect.

It is about survival of the fittest not survival of the most intelligent.

Looking at todays society there is alcohol that overrides that insticnt or can just let the insticnt of *shag* take over.

It seems that in the UK especially the unemployed, DHS crowd sire more off-spring at a younger age and more frequent than the more well-to-do coules who have had a better education amd leave it til they are older bringing in mutation issues.

Hence , we have will have more kids from less well-off families stuck in a rut of dole, drink, shag.

Please note I have not said the DHS crowd are anyless intelligent just less well-off etc. The problem is generally the less intelligent will get into this situation so there is achance of less intelligentr genes being passed on and more stupid kids being born.

With the advent of more technology there is the possibility that most people will not have to think as much about what they do...and this brings in memes rather than genes. People don't need to use their brains as much so potentially we are engineering an intellectual devolution or stagnation...it doesn't need huge amounts of people to come up with new technology. Inded they are in the minority so as long as there is still a 'class' of people with the correct education and life chances we should be oK from that point of view.

Froma physical evolutionary point of view we will still be evolving. Our spines still haven't evolved properly for walking upright yet whch is why we all keep getting bad backs.

How we will evolve now is difficult. As evolution is random and not just the fittest are surviving due to drugs who knows...we may start devolving!

Anyone seen "Gattaca"? Mayhap that sort of things is how humans will try to evolve in a way that isn't just a "dumb process"....

FB

Hmmm, interesting question.

Will that be evolution or genetic manipulation?

Have dogs evolved through selective breeding? Have fruits evolved through cross-pollination by humans? If we do not call tha evolution can we call the Gattaca premise evolution?

Isn't evolution defined as 'random selection via genetic mutation'?

Yeah I suppose....

Hmmm.... so what happens if we start trying to do a bit of GM with the human genome.... deliberately adding desirable qualities.

If it is not evolution then we would surely need to invent a new term?

FB

P.S. hasn't the word come to have another meaning in general use, around gradual change and improvement?

Ferrettbadger

Genetic manipulatoin which is what it is.



In a non-biological situation certainly but I would say gradual change rather than improvement. And even in a biological sense it means that but it is *random* rather than having some guided intelligence behind it to make the changes.

Evolution can hit cul-de-sacs where a evolutionary branch dies out for some reason. A branch could lose out to survival of tyhe fittest many generations down the line and hence was that branch of genetic mutations really an improvement or just a change?

Better 'Gattaca' than 'Idiocracy'

Still idoicracy was a fun (and criminally underated) film.

Poor old Mike judge don't get that much joy with his films does he? I thought Office Space was class in all and no one watched that either....

FB

*Everything that can be invented has been invented.*
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner,
U.S. patent office, 1899

Evolution is something we can see the effects of, not something we can see. *The end of Evolution* is as dangerous a statement as that espoused by *Intelligent Design* proponents, both proposing knowledge of alternates to the Theory of Evolution.