Evolution: Why Has it Stopped?

[quote]Mikaj wrote:
With modern medicine, it’s difficult to kill the weak ones off and prevent them from breeding. There’s no focus in this world, where top grade specimens may breed with people of inferior genetics. Who cares? We’ll probably end up killing ourselves off with pollution and such.[/quote]

Exactly. Evolution is based off natural selection, and that won’t happen with humans because we cater for weakness.

Unless some catastrophe occurs, where humans die frequently and only those with favourable assets/traits can survive, humans won’t evolve.

I watched your avatar for a minute and I felt some evolution taking place.

DB

There you go. You’re the retarded offspring of 5 monkeys having buttsex with a fish squirrel. Congratulations.

[quote]That One Guy wrote:
ehhh…that shows how little you know about evolutionary biology. Apes/monkeys are present day evolved states of their ancestors. Just like we’re present day evolved states of our ancestors. If you go far back enough though, you’ll find we share a common ancestor and we just “branched off” in different directions.

But we DID NOT evolve from the monkeys and apes you see at your local zoo.[/quote]

The branch off point is actually called a “clade”

Evolution takes time. As an example, when we were dwelling in caves, our skulls were much thicker - enabling us to take heavy blows to the skull.

We domesticated ourselves and refined our bone structure to trim the excess.

I predict we will evolve to the stage were we lose all body hair, have a weaker lower jaw and less muscle mass.

I was going to talk aboout how idiotic the OP is, but got distracted by DebraD’s avatar…

Why should we?
Why would a hairless guy and his genetic successors be more successful with reproduction and survival? Or the lower jaw guy?

It doesn’t work that way, Makavali.

I just want to see some half evolved monkey humans!

[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:
Why should we?
Why would a hairless guy and his genetic successors be more successful with reproduction and survival? Or the lower jaw guy?

It doesn’t work that way, Makavali.[/quote]

Because we’re domesticating ourselves and becoming to dependent on technology to sustain us.

Why would we need a large lower jaw if most of our food is going to end up being processed?

Why would we need body hair anymore?

Why would I smoke up at 3pm on a Thursday?

[quote]Mikaj wrote:
With modern medicine, it’s difficult to kill the weak ones off and prevent them from breeding. There’s no focus in this world, where top grade specimens may breed with people of inferior genetics. Who cares? We’ll probably end up killing ourselves off with pollution and such.[/quote]

Inferior genetics? Top grade specimens? If a bunch of double digit IQ mud farming rednecks are producing twice as many offspring as the rest of us, they are at a reproductive advantage. It has nothing to do with our notions of “better” or “worse”, “top grade” or “inferior”.

Even “leaps” in evolution, happen over tens and hundreds of thousands of years

[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:
Why should we?
Why would a hairless guy and his genetic successors be more successful with reproduction and survival? Or the lower jaw guy?

It doesn’t work that way, Makavali.[/quote]

That has been predicted by many scientists… Well I dunno about the lower jaw part, but less hair, thinner bone structure in general.

Its not so much being more successful per se, its trimming off the excess (like the thicker skulls we used to have as someone mentioned earlier). We don’t need so much hair when we have heating and have no animals scaring us into poofing up with goosebumps, so why waste resources growing it, some of our body and many of our bodily processes are unnecessary with all the technology we have.

Well those scientists are wrong. That’s not the way evolution works. Our DNA has no idea that we don’t need body hair or a thicker bone structure. We pass on our traits to the next generation if we successfully reproduce, and if we’re unsuccessful, the traits aren’t passed on.

Even though I’d like to think all the weightlifting I do is going to slowly make my lineage more robust over the generations, it doesn’t work like that.

I may be getting in way over my head here. Correct me if I have it all wrong.
I think evolution is being used in place of adaptation. Every living thing is adapting to external stimulus on a daily basis. Does that mean we, it, they are evolving everyday? Do we adapt so much over a long period of time, that it then becomes evolution?
I thought evolution was a physical change. Like having 3 eyes instead of 2 because you can see around corners or something.
Please enlighten me.

Dude, have you really not seen the first X-Men?

Prof. Charles Xavier: [narration] Mutation: it is the key to our evolution. It has enabled us to evolve from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, and normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward.

:wink:

[quote]That One Guy wrote:
Even “leaps” in evolution, happen over tens and hundreds of thousands of years[/quote]

Word. Most research points to evolution happening in spurts where smaller populations become isolated and a genetic trait or mutation becomes dominate. And when that population gets reintroduced to the greater pop that trait can eventually become a trait of the greater pop… so it seems to happen very quickly because thats what the fossil records show. This would also explain the lack of intermediary fossils between two species.

Who says it has?

The only thing that’s gonna happend is that we get more variation. And animals will become cuter and more furry because we don’t kill those because of every 10-year old girl in the world bitching about them.

Edit: Oh, and disease and genetic defects. Crappier vision, hearing, smell, allergies, asthma, cancer, worse immune system. On average that is.

[quote]danc2469 wrote:
I may be getting in way over my head here. Correct me if I have it all wrong.
I think evolution is being used in place of adaptation. Every living thing is adapting to external stimulus on a daily basis. Does that mean we, it, they are evolving everyday? Do we adapt so much over a long period of time, that it then becomes evolution?
I thought evolution was a physical change. Like having 3 eyes instead of 2 because you can see around corners or something.
Please enlighten me.[/quote]

Organisms themselves do not evolve. Populations of organisms do. Those that are most successful at mating get to pass their genes on so organisms with similar genotypes (and therefore phenotypes) become more abundant.

Also, evolution is believed to occur in a relatively short amount of time (compared to the amount of time the organism was thriving). This is the punctuated equilibrium model. The organism evolves over, let’s say, 5,000 years. However, the organism was around for 50,000 years.

Organisms with 3 eyes instead of 2 is quite a dramatic change. Evolution does not anticipate the future and works only on characteristics that organisms already have. An example, going back to the eyes, are the photoreceptors on some organisms. All they can do is detect the amount of light there is in their surroundings. Then there are organisms with more complex eyes (such as us humans) that are able to bend light using lenses so we can see images.