are we still evolving?

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charles brough

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Biologically, we have not evolved further in the almost 200,000 years we have existed as Homo Sapiens, as modern humans. In March 2007, Cochran/Hawks in World Science reported that the main genetic changes have merely been a slight shrinking of body and brain size and minor changes in metabolism! It is difficult to see how that could possible explain human progress.

All human evolution occurred in our primate ancestors to bring us to where we are now and have been for almost a fifth of a million years. So, does this mean that evolution stopped and been static all that time? What I believe it means is that it switched from the individual's genetic system to social evolution involving a new form of “genetic” change and natural selection.

Here is how I think it happened: The development of language and speech enabled people to build “spirit”-based world-view and way-of-thinking systems that bound them into loose societies of hunter-gatherers and, hence, reduced the murder-culling process in the human species. Most biological changes after that were epigenetic and are reversed during subsequent Malthusian eras. That is, deleterious changes accumulate epigenetically (less-genetic hence less permanent) in lavish times and are weeded out in more brutal times. These epigenetic changes have no over-all effect on the genetic heritage of the human race and help only to explain the cyclical nature of human societies.

If we figure the teleological function of evolution is to increase survival-security through population increase, further significant evolutionary change was not needed because the social evolutionary process took over and boosted human numbers far more effectively and in much less time.

The evolutionary process does still continue in social evolution. Successful, new “spirit”-based WV or “religious” systems were always less inaccurate and, hence, more advanced than the more primitive, backward, and inaccurate ones they replaced. This is the way natural selection works on society. The technological skill and, hence, the survival and (teleological) progress of a society has not depended upon any changes in the human biological makeup but on how advanced was what the people believed. Ethnologists study primitive religions—not "primitive people." We are no "smarter" than we were more than one hundred and fifty thousand years ago. It is only our cultural heritage that has continued to evolve. Individually, physically and instinctively we have not changed.

Charles, http://humanpurpose.simplenet.com
 
I don't believe these results. The fact that we fly spaceships now instead of riding animals...shows that we have changed for the better.
 
draqon said:
I don't believe these results. The fact that we fly spaceships now instead of riding animals...shows that we have changed for the better.
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It simply shows that we know more. Our softwear has improved. Our hardwear is basically the same.
 
To improve hardware, research is going on in many fronts - from GABA, Noortropics to Glycation retardant and Reservatrol.
 
We have changed, variagated across the planet - from minor differences like skin melanism and eye color to notable size variations (couple varieties of pigmies, etc).

Whether or not these changes are "minor" depends on the future's demands.

Whenever a large new body form emerges - omnivorous bipedal mammal, say - the subsequent plateau of easily visible change probably hides a catching up of internal adjustments, such as metabolic innovations or internal anatomical adjustments. Heart attacks and strokes still kill the young, of certain genetic vulnerabilities.

Whether or not they are "minor" depends on the future's demands.

Evolution proceeds on two legs - variation and selection. We haven't faced a major selection ( discounting the epidemics that scourged the Americas in the 1500s) for quite a while, in human terms - or the blink of an eye, in geological terms.
 
We are changing over time....growing weaker in our bodies. In effect, dying.

The development of our tool making capacity helped to compensate for our physical weaknesses, allowing us to hunt meat, build shelters and make clothes but that was out of need and not due to some mythical apotheosis which humans seem naturally fond to fantasize.

Some people who suffer from this fantasy like to imagine something called evolution which has selected us because we are...ahem...fitter. Fitter than some weak creatures that we imagine no doubt to comfort ourselves as we grow more disabled. The classic case: body hair. Yes... loss of body hair enabled us to escape fleas and the diseases they carry or was it because it allowed us to regulate our body temperature easier? Either way it was a positive mutation that prospered. Why does the image come to me of hairless humans fleeing the jungle because life is made unbearable by hordes of ferocious stinging insects? I guess I see fear as the real human motivator for human action and attempts by scientific and religious minds to hide that as an attempt to escape from fear itself.

What other mammals have become as weak and helpless as we have?

I don't think we can measure the 'success' of humanity by the longevity of it's members but by the longevity of it as a species. Even that is just an arbitrary yardstick. Considering how long the dinosaurs dominated earth's terrestrial ecosystem we may be in for an abrupt cot death.

Are we still evolving?

We never did.
 
How have we grown weaker?

The development of our tool making capacity helped to compensate for our physical weaknesses, allowing us to hunt meat, build shelters and make clothes but that was out of need and not due to some mythical apotheosis which humans seem naturally fond to fantasize.
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Who said it wasn't out of need? Of course it was out of need. We needed food, and we needed shelter. We're no different than any other mammal in that respect. I don't know of anyone who believes we began hunting, tool-creation, and shelter-building out of a want, rather than a need. Of course we did it out of necessity.

Some people who suffer from this fantasy like to imagine something called evolution which has selected us because we are...ahem...fitter. Fitter than some weak creatures that we imagine no doubt to comfort ourselves as we grow more disabled.
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We aren't imagining anything. There is evidence supporting the theory of evolution, and not just our own.

And again, how are we disabled?

Yes... loss of body hair enabled us to escape fleas and the diseases they carry or was it because it allowed us to regulate our body temperature easier? Either way it was a positive mutation that prospered. Why does the image come to me of hairless humans fleeing the jungle because life is made unbearable by hordes of ferocious stinging insects? I guess I see fear as the real human motivator for human action and attempts by scientific and religious minds to hide that as an attempt to escape from fear itself.
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Your thinking is backwards. Have you ever had to pull a nasty bug out of your hair? A benefit of being relatively hairless is that it makes the removal of insects easier. Also, you can see the thing on your skin if you are hairless. If you are saying that our hair loss is a sign of us falling apart, I think you're missing the point.

What other mammals have become as weak and helpless as we have?
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Again I ask: In what way? We are so far from being helpless, that we are the only animal on the planet that has no predators. Yet, we can kill anything. What we don't eat, we hunt. We can live places where nothing else can. We are capable of making tools that not only catch and cook our food, but build us machines we use for locomotion, entertainment, education. There is no more perfect creature on the planet than the Human Being.

I don't think we can measure the 'success' of humanity by the longevity of it's members but by the longevity of it as a species.
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Or you could measure what we've accomplished. Has a dolphin ever built a television? Did the dinosaurs hold sporting events witnessed live by 300 million people? Has anything else on this planet built a stadium? Has any other species captured an animal for the sake of research and preservation?

Considering how long the dinosaurs dominated earth's terrestrial ecosystem we may be in for an abrupt cot death.
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I have no idea what "cot death" means, but...well, no, I have no idea what you mean. There are a couple of things wrong with this comparison, however. One is that you are comparing one species to thousands of species; "Dinosaur" is a broad-stroke grouping of a ton of species, while "Human" only refers to one.

The other problem is that comparing the dino reign to ours and using it as evidence of our weakness doesn't make sense. We haven't been around as long as the dinos were, obviously, but you can't say that we won't be. There's no evidence to suggest we won't last as long as they did. Barring an earth-shattering meteor strike, or a nova close enough to radiate us, the only thing that's going to end Humanity is the death of our Sun. That's it. We will adapt to climate changes, to raised ocean levels, to whatever comes our way that can be adapted to.

Are we still evolving?

We never did.
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Would ya please offer up some evidence? Maybe something in our physical makeup now, as opposed to then, which displays a weakening?
 
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Why is it so hard to accept what expects have found out? We are unable to find any biological evolution in the last almost 200,000 years that can even begin to explain all the change in society over that time.

We started with small hunting-gathering groups then and they have since EVOLVED (social evolution) into huge "cultural heritages" (religion-based systems) that hold hundreds of millions of people together in "civilization."
Natural selection works on societies, not the individual, and has for all that time.

charles, http://humanpurpose.simplenet.com
 
DeepThought said:
We are changing over time....growing weaker in our bodies. In effect, dying.
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If that is true, then in two hundred years or so, we will look like the aliens of the Close encounters movie - frail as robots developed by us do all the physical work. Our ultimate evolution could be for the machines to grow food and take care of us. Those days are not far.
 
draqon said:
I don't believe these results. The fact that we fly spaceships now instead of riding animals...shows that we have changed for the better.
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This is normal human progress. All animals would progress in knowledge like this as well, but because they cannot communicate in words, or think outside of hardwired primal instincts (survive, hunt, have offspring, die) they cannot evolve knowledge-wise, but only body-wise, because the existance of humans have changed things for them. I think the homo-sapiens came into existance when language was invented. This is many, many times more significant then most would think. This doesn't just allow pure communication between humans, but a way of expressing one's feelings, and thoughts. Before we had language, people were no better than animals, because the only thoughts they had were primal. Once language was introduced, instead of thinking: food, survive, mate, die, they could have infinite thoughts, because they thought in a language, before they couldn't think because they had no language to think in. It's like a computer with everything disconnected. The processor is capable of 3 billion actions a second, (3ghz) but it can't function without input, or an output, so it lays dormant until it becomes connected with a common thing, language.
 
There are no stages in evolution, that would imply some final product that were striving to be. Evolution is a never ending process so yes we are still evolving. just remember that it takes a very long time so changes will not be detectable in us . who is to say that a bacteria is any less evolved than we are just because they are less complex. Who knows what we will look like in the future, it depends on what sort of pressures are on us and mutations arise and what traits allow some people to be more successful than others.
 
Humans themselves will propell our race into the next stage of evolution. The Biotech and Nanotech revolution will give us all the tools we need to make it happen. Human thought, is just a chain in the link of evolution, because our futures will be controlled by Artificial Intelligence. And our own bodily functions will be enhanced through biotech and nano-tech. Example, expanding the neuro connections in our brains with the use of nano bots. Brain to chip interfaces aren't science fiction, people with parkinsons disease are using cochlear implants. Imagine where this techonolgy will be in 2 decades. The human race is evolving into cyborgs. Each and every decade, machines are becomming more intimate with humans. Ask yourself, how much time do you spend away from a machine? Now ask yourself this, how much time did your great grandfather spend around machines?

When you get up in the mornning, and go to work, a machine takes you there. If you want some entertainment along the way, a machine within reach supplies it for you. If you need to inform your boss of the traffic accident that's going to make you late, you use a machine to inform them. Once you arrive at work, you'll mostly like be working on a machine of some sort. Rather it be a computer, forklift, lawn mower, sophisticated electrical stove, etc. And once you go home, you'll most likely be transfixed by your T.V (Another Machine).

So here's my point, go back 3 generations. And visualize the average day of your great- great, grandfather. And analyze how much time he spent with machines. And go down until you reach yourself. You'll realize that your relationship with Machines are becomming more intimate with each generation. 90% of your day, you're connected, or using some sort of machine. Now lets go 3 generations into the future. With the exception of Transportation, everything that I've listed will come from within.

This will all be possible with the nanobots swiming in our brains. I'd advise everyone to subsribe to the news letter provided on www.kurzweilai.net.

By signing up to this letter it will email you everytime a scientific breakthrough, that brings us closer to the singularity is made. You will be astounded by the sheer amount of prominent universities and scientists that are working on bringing us to this next stage of evolution.

If anyone is actually serious about the next stage of Evolution. This summit is a must watch.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Kurzweil+Stanford+
 
if we value brains more than brawn and those guys get more babes, will our evolutionary pattern change?
 
All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment…
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-Nietzsche
 
No beast causes genocide of its own kind. Only humans do. Do you know that the Iraqi Muslims killed almost all the Iraqi Christians? Who is the laughing stock of whom?
 
kmguru said:
No beast causes genocide of its own kind. Only humans do. Do you know that the Iraqi Muslims killed almost all the Iraqi Christians? Who is the laughing stock of whom?
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No "Beast" ever had the capability. We will aquire even more dangerous abilities in the future.
 
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