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Given that fertility rates are currently plummeting worldwide, the principles of natural selection would dictate that humans are currently undergoing very high selection pressure for specific traits. Basically, any genetic trait that causes people today to think "You know, I think I'm going to remain childfree" is specifically selected against, and any trait that causes people to want more children will be selected f…
sure seems like a lot of 'em have
If that's true. Why haven't we evolved into a species that doesn't harm each other or the environment?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's such an extreme claim. It defies common sense. You'd have to proclaim that there was some event that _stopped_ evolution in humans, universally. How is that even possible? Especially 50k years ago. I'd be a little more forgiving if the claim was that evolution stopped in, say, 1999.
Rather a lot more things about human genomic history are known today compared to 2000. Discoveries about being able to process lactose and when those genes evolved all were after 2000, for example. Does it excuse Gould for making such bold claims? You have to decide I guess. That is a lot fuzzier.
Given that fertility rates are currently plummeting worldwide, the principles of natural selection would dictate that humans are currently undergoing very high selection pressure for specific traits. Basically, any genetic trait that causes people today to think "You know, I think I'm going to remain childfree" is specifically selected against, and any trait that causes people to want more children will be selected f…
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Many modern societies are structured in a way that makes children an economic negative to their parents. From an individuals' POV, the "smart" play is not having children and hope others do.
Individuals believe that they do not need children because they have saved up for retirement, not accounting for the fact that if everyone did this and there was nobody left to do any work once they reach retirement age, that money will be worthless and they'll be unable to retire. The alternative is mass-scale immigration, and that's becoming unpopular. For an example of what happens if a society has neither enough children, nor immigration, see South Korea. Poverty among the elderly is rampant and they are increasingly being forced back into the labor market.
Many western societies needed to start applying a large multiplier to parental benefits decades ago.
Genetic drift is not evolution. Every single birth brings about genetic drift. Evolution is gaining or losing specific traits. Individually, humans do gain and lose traits but from an macroscopic view, those traits are just a blip. An cheetah that lose it's ability to run fast many not survive. A human that loses a some useful trait does not die(government assistance. I'm talking about the West because I can't speak…
And lactase persistence is quite recent. Some people say that Tibetans and some S E Asians are particularly adapted as well to their local environment of high altitude and sea diving but I don’t know anything about that.
Given that fertility rates are currently plummeting worldwide, the principles of natural selection would dictate that humans are currently undergoing very high selection pressure for specific traits. Basically, any genetic trait that causes people today to think "You know, I think I'm going to remain childfree" is specifically selected against, and any trait that causes people to want more children will be selected f…
Idiocracy's "stupid genes win" likely won't happen, my theory is that selection will remove memes (behavioral/thought/cultural patterns) that cause childlessness from the meme pool much faster.
Could also well be that natural selection will rear it's ugly head again first. I previously thought that people rejecting the evolutionary theory (creationists etc) were just backwards and anti-science. But I've realized since that this is a too simple judgement. The ethical implications of evolution are dark. Humans have had a word for selection since the dawn of language - "death".
A bit sad that paraphrasing Paul Watzlawick in this context fits very well: one cannot not participate in evolution.
As for humans: I mean, duh? The selective pressures faced by humans have changed radically in the time we've been around.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is certainly not what I learned to be the definition of evolution in my biology classes. First, the article is not just proposing genetic drift, which is the change in allele frequency by chance . It is arguing that change in allele frequency is due to natural selection pressure, and that most certainly is evolution. Copied from the Wikipedia entry, because I think it's simple and clear: > Evolution is the chang…
The article is talking about the last 5000 years, GP is talking about the last 50-100 years. I think most people who say that natural selection is over are talking about ~100 years and not 5000 years.