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

Seems this thread is in danger of refuting itself.

May I ask what the Guy With The Brown Hat puts forward in place of the Theory of Evolution?

Will anybody give me odds on 1. Lamarckian theory or 2. Creationism?

turvy

I've noticed some comments to the effect that stupid people are out breeding the smart ones. Are they stupid or just less educated as we percieve it ?
And if they are stupid and we wish to leave them behind on the eveolutionary path, we simply make stupidity a non-survival trait. We remove the pointless warnings on things, and let nature take its course (Have you seen the warning on tooth picks ?)


Math
"Get your philoshophy from a bumper sticker Warning, live without warning" Greenday

I don't put anything forward but open-mindedness.

That's an interesting idea, about leaving the useless warnings off. Although I would like to appologise to any animal put into a microwave by act of stupidity.


"Theres a higher proportion of stupid/weak people nowdays than say a few thousand years ago. Simply because nowdays if your stupid/weak/ill you get to live, if you go back a few thousand years you would of died."
(post 18, for those who think the backlog is too long)

I Don't think this is really true. Evolution hasn't worked for humans the same way it does for other species for some time already(though not long enough to have done any serious damage). For instance, if you were born a smart kid in a poor family in the middle ages, your chances to reproduction would still have sucked. While the aristocracy would have chosen their lifepartners from a very small genepool, practically inbreeding.


Any thoughts about actively 'helping nature a hand' would have to be treated cautiously though. Don't forget what kind of things mister Adolf Schickelgruber (aka Hitler) did; murdering so-called lesser races and handicapped people.

No - our medical science does mean that the weak and stupid survive and breed - irrelevant of what used to happen. Evolution might have stopped hundreds of years ago, but at least then genetic flaws didnt survive.

But this is probably true for all animals when the going is relatively easy; it's when the going gets tough and population numbers diminish that the weak get weeded out. And that will probably happen to us humans too before the century is out.

Noggin

Evolution doesn't *stop* - sure we will one day be extinct but short of the entire planet being annihilated, *life* is likely to continue on earth indefinitely

Guy With The Brown Hat

"I don't put anything forward but open-mindedness."

Touche.

But you DO call into question Darwinian Evolutionary Thoery which, so far, has better stood the test of time than other Theories put forward to explain the evidence.

I repeat the question - what do you offer in its place?

turvy

The way I see it, when considering these different theories of the origins and development of life, it helps to look at the bigger picture. Like, so it's not just a case of pigeonholing theories into different types and then sticking to your chosen set.

Comparing Darwin's evolution theory and the Lamarckian theory, they both have the common concept of changes being progressed to future generations. The key difference is in the method used to do so.

Creationism, on the other hand, states that the many different life forms were created at some point from a source that wasn't other breeding life forms.

Okay .. so, taking creationism in its purest form, what you start off with is a set of different species unconnected with each other. Thousands of generations later there is still no crossover - the set of species is the same or less than (some may have died out in the meantime) the set that originally existed.

The way I visualise this is as a load of distinct lines that don't branch or merge or anything. Start to end, it is just one species.

Taking evolution (and I use that word for both of the similar theories mentioned above) in its purest form, you start off with one species and repeatedly branch out. All species are connected, and you can trace all of them back to just one origin.

But now we have an unanswered question that applies to both the creationism and evolution models - how was that or those first species created? The single origin point of pure evolution has to come from somewhere, as do the multiple origin points of pure creationism.

Just as chemists tend to split their subject of study into 'organic' and 'inorganic', the same tends to be done with questions of origin. The origins of organic entities is closely tied to the origin of inorganic things, as organic stuff is made up from inorganic components (and, optionally, an directly immeasurable 'life' substance.) So to determine the origin of the species, we are also asking for the origin of the Universe - whichever species development theory (creationism or evolution or ..) you like to take.

As for the creationism vs evolution debate that often rages, why does it have to be so black and white, especially with the common ground of the question of initial origin? Could it not be that instead of a pure creationism or pure evolution view of species development, a compromise of the two may be more correct. Perhaps several initial species were created initially somehow, and then optionally evolved into other species. Maybe they were created at different times, rather than at the same time. What about species that die out? There are many different ways to combine the two approaches.

Indeed, the archaelogical evidence uncovered does not match either pure creationism or pure evolution. For example, some fossils have been uncovered where the evolutory ancestors have not been discovered, and then remain basically the same for many generations, and then disappear, i.e. die out, pretty much as they first started. An inexplicable dot to the side of the graph of pure evolution. (I really ought to find references for this, I'm relying on hazy memories here.)

So this is why it is important to keep an open mind, and not be drawn into misleading creationism vs evolution arguments that unnecessarily polarise people into overly black and white thought processes.

ARRRR Stupidity and evolution the process of stupidity is that of not asking question, of ones self, and not chellenging others, to evolve is to learn from ones oops's in life, so yes, we are always moving forward, down ward spiarl this is a metaphor for maybe not quit know how you feel about things, thats fine we all have that from time to time, now a qusestion for you, with in that head of yours, you have a brain, with about 1 billion plus cells, each one has the ability to hold in it memory all the information that you might ever need, and more, so if you use your brain, in just the right way, you CAN LEARN; UNLEARN AND RELEARN, so by this very process you are in your onw right a GENIUS and that goes for each and every one that has the ability to think and emote, you see that th reallygood thing about being haman we have the choice of how we repond to feedback, we can and must all ask, how can I use this, data when can I use it, what might I add to this to make it work for me, who else could benifit, for this new learning, and is it useful, we are more creative then we are given creit for, and we are all intitled to our thoughts and emotions, yet we are much more than our thoughts and emotions, and with out a dought we are much more capable then we could ever imagine, so look to what your needs are, an look after yourself first, and the world will look after it's self

ARRRR Stupidity and evolution the process of stupidity is that of not asking question, of ones self, and not chellenging others, to evolve is to learn from ones oops's in life, so yes, we are always moving forward, down ward spiarl this is a metaphor for maybe not quit know how you feel about things, thats fine we all have that from time to time, now a qusestion for you, with in that head of yours, you have a brain, with about 1 billion plus cells, each one has the ability to hold in it memory all the information that you might ever need, and more, so if you use your brain, in just the right way, you CAN LEARN; UNLEARN AND RELEARN, so by this very process you are in your onw right a GENIUS and that goes for each and every one that has the ability to think and emote, you see that th reallygood thing about being haman we have the choice of how we repond to feedback, we can and must all ask, how can I use this, data when can I use it, what might I add to this to make it work for me, who else could benifit, for this new learning, and is it useful, we are more creative then we are given creit for, and we are all intitled to our thoughts and emotions, yet we are much more than our thoughts and emotions, and with out a dought we are much more capable then we could ever imagine, so look to what your needs are, an look after yourself first, and the world will look after it's self

can i just whack my two cents in here. i have only read a few posts but get the drift. i have nothing to say about stupid people, thats an education matter, but on evolution i am quite excited.
some obscure and not very publicised reports show that the human mind rather than the body is what is evolving. more people these days are being born with psychic abilities and when a 'gifted' child comes along there genius in its prime superceeds that of the great minds from the past, ie einstein, kant, socrates etc etc. this all being evident in this new era of openmindedness and understanding. the technology we create today to make things simpler would have someone 50 years ago screaming for a paracetamol and so on and so on.
sorry if i have repeated anyone, as i said i only read a few. thanks for listening.

creachy

Sounds interesting - do you have any further information on these studies?

I wonder if this theorised increase in mental powers (aside from the psychics) is to do with manipulating things where the inner workings are increasingly abstracted. As we build more intricate objects and tools using components and discoveries already made, we can increase complexity just by adding abstractions, rather than having to know right down to the lowest level how it works.

I don't think evolution has got anything to do with adaptation to complex machines. This adaptation comes within one's life. If you grow up playing commodoor, you won't have much trouble working with computrs in later life.

We think we're cleverer because our machines are more complex.
But how many of us are smart enough to survive without them?

Thought so.

Noggin

I don't follow the logic that our intelligence is evolving simply because Einsteins work surpassed Newtons etc.
Einstein didn't have to start from basic principals - he could just learn what others before him had done in s horter time than he would have had to figure out himself and build on it.

Like the saying goes - standing on the shoulders of giants.

There was a study last year that showed that the amount of information available to an individual nowadays meant that it was more important to know where to find the relevant information than to know the basic facts. In other words I may not know what the last words of Oscar Wilde were - but I should be able to manipulate my information sources to discover it.

However this discounts the value of original thought, someone who can take that first step into the dark, and that is not a factor of intelligence, that is just a random thought expressed into a suitable environment.

Intellectually we're growing - emotionally...... you tell me.

So half the researchers I've read say we're evolving. The other half say we're getting more stupid. I, for one, agree with the researchers!

nop we are definitely getting stupider

everything they call an advancement in technology or something that is going to help us do something that we want to do is actually a stupid thing to do, no one wants to do it and if we do do it then it will fail, we will think it works but it wont

for example - irradicating smallpox was found to be good but it was actually stupid for 2 reasons - now infecting people with smallpox is a really helpful weapon and two the number of people dying from cancer has increased - cancer is definitely a worse thing to die from than smallpox
we can't live for ever, everyone will die, the more things that kill us that are irradicated the worse the things that kill us will become

we never evolved we just became more stupid

We can defeat, in time all medical reasons to stop us living. And, do you have any idea how horrible smallpox is to die from. Also - about 1 in 3 people get cancer. A small amount of them die from it.
Smallpox is airbourne and can be caught just by being in the same building as someone with it. 1/3 of people who contract smallpox die from it. Work out the figures there - smallpox is a definite nasty.
Also smallpox is a useless weapon for everyone except doomsdayists, because it hurts everyone, you can't target it.