Natural selection has stopped for the human race.

So I watched Idiocracy this weekend and it got me thinking. Natural selection, up until the start of the industrial revolution, pretty much did its job of weeding out the weak and stupid. Once our civilization had reached a point of comfort and safety, the stupid and weak were no longer dying off getting left behind in the genetic foot race, but out breeding the more intelligent and strong. By strong i dont mean muscles, i mean the ability to withstand disease, no genetic defects, that sort of thing. The competion for superior mates, food, and living spaces is what drove mankind to excell over its neighbors in the past and attain great feats, when you look at the globe it seems some races/civilizations are more advanced than others, sometimes hundreds of years more advanced, even though the human race is the same age some examples are the Spartans and Arabs: The ability of providing some the best warriors in the history of mankind are what ancient sparta were best known for and it came from their extreme training and the practice of infanticide www.history.com..., but look at the greek culture now, ruined by stupid people put in charge. Ancient middle eastern cultures produced some of the most brilliant inventions including pumps, irrigation, mathematics, and astronomy of the known world riversfromeden.wordpress.com.... Now look at them, their problem now, as was Europes earlier in history, religious extremism. Stupid people alowed to run amok have ruined many vast civilizations.

As for the weak, they died when diseases and injury affected them. Sometimes quite quickly. The strongest succeeded and moved on while biologically inferior people died off: www.freerepublic.com... This has happened throughout history but has stopped with the advance of medicine. I have nothing against the cures, but when it causes your country to have an uncontrollable population explosion, then it is a problem. I used to swim in a river called the South Platt River just outside of Brighton, Colorado when i was a kid. filthy water with a waste processing plant up stream. i used to run around with no shoes and that sort of thing. Now I barely get sick and pain killers dont work on me. I built an immunity to flues and colds by not being weak and letting my immune system do its job. If it wasnt for epi-pens, alergies would kill off thousands. May sound awful but im looking at this from a emotionaly neutral stance.

In America, we went from first manned, heavier than air, powered flight at Kitty Hawk, to breaking the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 on on October 14, 1947 and landing on the moon in 1969. Stupid children in the first half of the century, where advances in technology in my opinion, were the greatest, werent given a free pass if they couldnt succeed like they are now. They repeated the grade or dropped out. Now you have morons graduating that dont even know the name of our solar system, or where china is on a map. We have children born in 4th or 5th generation welfare families with no brains and no motivation to succeed. I know it sounds counter intuitive but the workforce didnt have its safety regulations that we have now and it worked out. Stupid people, doing stupid things were dealt with usually pretty quick. You didnt need a warning sign back then to not drink draino, walk in the machine while running, or eat the dessicant. Our culture, once difficult to survive in has become so easy a cave man can do it. We are progressing backwards where politicians would rather have a country of idiotic lab apes, than a population of intelligent human beings. Here is a test from the 1890s: www.salina.com... and we've all seen the common core crap on the net lately.

What im trying to put forth in my ramblings is, The human race isnt being challenged, there is no reason for evolution to work if we dont have anything to adapt to. Yes there are great inventions and massive advances in medecine and technology now, but the population has become dumber.

What im trying to put forth in my ramblings is, The human race isnt being challenged, there is no reason for evolution to work if we dont have anything to adapt to. Yes there are great inventions and massive advances in medecine and technology now, but the population has become dumber.

What makes you think that there is an evolutionary advantage to intelligence? There are more ants than people on Earth.

As long as we reproduce, we will evolve.

What makes you think population of a species has anything to do with the evolution superiority of that species? India has over a billion people and they are barely above throwing spears at eachother.

a reply to: V22tech
That's a good point. I guess.

But can you answer my question?

if this earth is threatened by an outside force, like a meteor. we will have the intelligence to save it, if not we have the ability to quickly evolve maybe not physically but technologically by using our intelligence. Any other species would die. Same can be said for using our intelligence to evolve into an amaglamation of machine and bionics. its already happening now, with prosthetics.

a reply to: V22tech

if this earth is threatened by an outside force, like a meteor. we will have the intelligence to save it, if not we have the ability to quickly evolve maybe not physically but technologically by using our intelligence.

Perhaps (I would like to think so anyway). Do you think we are less intelligent than we were 200 years ago? Could our intelligence have saved us from an asteroid then? Can it now?

I think you are missing my point though. Natural selection does not mean a continual "improvement" of any particular characteristic. It means that a mutation which gives an organism a better chance of reproducing in a particular environment will tend to be passed on to offspring. Evolution does not follow any particular direction. It changes as the environment changes.

We could well become dumber as time goes on, that does not mean we will stop evolving or become extinct. Who knows, maybe we will end up being stupid but able to survive in a very warm world because of physical changes to our bodies.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: V22tech
That's a good point. I guess.

But can you answer my question?

I will, Phage.

Ants are, actually, pretty damned intelligent. I would hope that you have some idea of the social structure and work hierarchy of an ant colony. They may not be able to build rocket ships and computers, but ants work together, provide for their own needs, plan for the future. As I think about it, it seems like ants are a damn sight more intelligent than a lot of humans that I personally know.

Ants are, indeed, intelligent. I learned by traveling around the world and seeing people in their natural, native environment that intelligence depends on where one happens to be standing at a given moment. If ants were not intelligent by ant standards, they would all die and natural selection would finish them off.

This may not be the article I was looking for but it has been reported the human genome has changed around 7% in the last 5000 years.. Medical advances allowing people who should have died at birth to survive and pass on their genes coupled with access to food and clean water has no doubt made changes in our immune systems.. With 7 billion people (and growing) plus all the interracial marriages I would assume our genetic make-up will continue to change and evolve.
www.reuters.com/.../us-evolution-human-idUSN1043228620071210

(Reuters) - Human evolution has been moving at breakneck speed in the past several thousand years, far from plodding along as some scientists had thought, researchers said on Monday.

In fact, people today are genetically more different from people living 5,000 years ago than those humans were different from the Neanderthals who vanished 30,000 years ago, according to anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin.

The genetic changes have related to numerous different human characteristics, the researchers said.

Beneficial genetic changes have appeared at a rate roughly 100 times higher in the past 5,000 years than at any previous period of human evolution, the researchers determined. They added that about 7 percent of human genes are undergoing rapid, relatively recent evolution.

a reply to: incoserv

I'm aware of the abilities of a hive mind. I'm also aware of the abilities of individual intelligence.
Can ants survive in Antarctica?

individually an ant is not very intelligent, it serves a single purpose with in the hive. as a whole the hive seems intelligent as far as problem solving goes, but i strongly believe its a hive mentality. Individual humans are smart as far as the other races are concerned, some barely able to blink and breath at the same time. Many humans together arent very bright, just watch what happens when you present a disaster scenario to one individual as opposed to hundreds.

a reply to: V22tech

Many humans together arent very bright, just watch what happens when you present a disaster scenario to one individual as opposed to hundreds.

That's an interesting outlook.
As individuals we have our weaknesses but most of us do OK. Put a lot of us together and those weaknesses seem to feed each other. One person is a little bit stupid. A mob is an idiot.

Can ants survive in Antarctica?

ANTarctica? HA! You did that on purpose, didn't you?

No, In Antarctica, an ant would not be very intelligent. Could a college professor who grew up in a warm climate survive in Antarctica? Probably not. Does that mean that the college professor is not intelligent because he can't survive in Antarctica?

I have seen people who were intelligent in one situation fall apart in other situations. I have seen Mongol herders who could not read survive a winter at -50F where an educated man from the city would have died within two days. I have seen barefoot Mexican Indians who couldn't read feed their families on crops that they grew because they knew their business like scientists.

Intelligence is relative, and intelligence is necessary for healthy survival.

a reply to: incoserv

Does that mean that the college professor is not intelligent because he can't survive in Antarctica?

No. But groups do. And it's not because of hive intelligence.

Doesn't matter how many ants go to Antarctica.

a reply to: V22tech

The population has become dumber and you know what's funny about it? Some of them can't tell the difference between a week and weak.

a reply to: Phage

If we're talking about natural selection here, that is a process that takes time. A long time. If you threw a bunch of ants in to Antarctica, they'd all die. Know what, if you threw a big bunch of people from Miami into Antarctica, chances are they'd all die, too.

Given time to adapt, some just might learn to thrive in Antarctica (some of the ants as well as some the people from Miami).

Yes, there's a hive mind in the ant colony, but there is - in that hive mind - a specie of intelligence. Some kind of intelligence is necessary for a species to thrive and be successful.

I agree that we have come to a place in human society where we can circumvent the process of natural selection. I believe that natural selection is an inexorable process and that it will have its way. The lesser will be culled out, eventually. We can't, actually, circumvent the process. We just postpone it. I believe that when it finally happens, it will happen catastrophically .

To clarify comments in my previous post:

I do not accept the THEORY of evolution. (Now, I know that it is out of vogue to think for one's self, but evolution is still, after all, no more than THEORY, not a scientific fact. My apologies for daring to defy the high priests of science.) I do, however, observe and accept the idea of natural selection and adaptation. The fittest do survive and adapt to changing environments; those organisms that do not adapt will perish.

I believe that this process is inexorable, that it will never stop. We may circumvent it for a while through medical science and social engineering, but it will eventually catch up with us. And when it does, it will do in a short time what should have taken place over a long period of time.

a reply to: incoserv

If we're talking about natural selection here, that is a process that takes time. A long time. If you threw a bunch of ants in to Antarctica, they'd all die. Know what, if you threw a big bunch of people from Miami into Antarctica, chances are they'd all die, too.

How about a bunch of people from Nome? But I thought we had taken a sidetrack about the relative advantages of hive vs individual intelligence.

Some kind of intelligence is necessary for a species to thrive and be successful.

Amoebae have been thriving for a very long time.

I believe that when it finally happens, it will happen catastrophically.

If the global environment were to change extremely rapidly (i.e. a large asteroid impact or something self induced) that well may be true. If you're talking about in the long term us no longer being "human" that's probably true. If you consider changing into something else to be a catastrophe.

Its just simple math that the more people you have the more are going to be stupid same with the number of intelligent. I guess i was trying to convey that if our population never changed and our society kept on the way its going, eventually the very few intelligent people left would be inventing male enhancement pills, instead of FTL.

a reply to: V22tech
I really do agree with that. Intelligence no longer seems to have much to do with the likelihood of reproduction.
That doesn't mean humans will stop evolving.

yeah thats cute, ignore everything else, concentrate on a typo, make a smartass remark. next.