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Genome Deterioration and Humans Getting Dumber

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posted on Dec, 28 2012 @ 12:30 AM
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Originally posted by FormerSkeptic

Originally posted by HairlessApe
There is no unbelievable 450 year growth in all of humanity's brain size.

Prove it.


Since I have absolutely no idea what type of gibberish reasoning you're trying to pull with such meaningless words that refer to who knows what, I'm at a loss. There. I've proven it.


I was refering to when you said "But you haven't explained how or why the first mutation occurred to produce such a huge jump in brain size going from 900cc to 1350cc."

You said it one post ago. You could try to remember what you just said or scroll up.



posted on Dec, 28 2012 @ 12:47 AM
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Originally posted by HairlessApe

I'm entirely willing to support the idea of an ET intervention in mankind's evolution in the face of evidence supporting it. Unfortunately there is no evidence.

I asked you to provide something in the way of proof, and instead you called me a idiot.

I tried to explain to you how a scientifically accepted process explains something that occured naturally, and I'm "closed-minded" for not taking your word that it was ET with again, zero evidence.

You sir, are the closed-minded one.


Those who incessantly and stubbornly cry for proof while defending mere theories as if they're God-given mandates are the real closed minded ones. I cannot imagine a more pathetic example of irony and hypocrisy.



posted on Dec, 28 2012 @ 12:50 AM
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reply to post by FormerSkeptic
 


A theory with proof is more likely to be correct than a theory without proof.



posted on Dec, 28 2012 @ 01:51 AM
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Originally posted by FormerSkeptic

Originally posted by HairlessApe

I'm entirely willing to support the idea of an ET intervention in mankind's evolution in the face of evidence supporting it. Unfortunately there is no evidence.

I asked you to provide something in the way of proof, and instead you called me a idiot.

I tried to explain to you how a scientifically accepted process explains something that occured naturally, and I'm "closed-minded" for not taking your word that it was ET with again, zero evidence.

You sir, are the closed-minded one.


Those who incessantly and stubbornly cry for proof while defending mere theories as if they're God-given mandates are the real closed minded ones. I cannot imagine a more pathetic example of irony and hypocrisy.


Look up colloquial theory, then look up scientific theory. They aren't the same.
The laws of science create scientific theory.

An example of this is Newton's laws constituting the theory of gravity. Yes, gravity is a theory.

And why SHOULD I give your idea any creedence whatsoever without evidence?
edit on 28-12-2012 by HairlessApe because: (no reason given)



posted on Dec, 28 2012 @ 07:32 AM
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Originally posted by FormerSkeptic

Originally posted by Dispo
reply to post by FormerSkeptic
 


I only talk in meaningless one liners or overly long factual posts.

The one liners are always open to "please elaborate" if you want more information, which will come in the form of one of the aforementioned too long posts.

What my technical post tried to explain was that your initial sources cannot be correct. If you don't want to understand the facts, continue to ignore my post and believe whatever you want, but you're wrong.

The reason pseudoscience like this is allowed to propagate is because of people like you - you deem the science behind the debunking as "too hard to follow" even though it's part of what you can learn at the age of 16.

If it genuinely is too hard for you to understand, not just that you're lazy, then that's fine. It doesn't matter.

What does matter is that you blindly follow people like Crabtree despite not understanding the mechanics behind his work - you take his conclusions as gospel when you could easily dismiss them if you took the time to study the most entry level genetics.

A special tl;dr for you:
- if you don't understand the science, don't post about it


Thank you. So now I know that you are a snotty, arrogant, stubborn fool who cannot engage in thoughtful discussion with those who hold contrasting views. I'm sorry to have offended anybody, but the truth must be stated.

No he isn't. He answered clealry but did comment that you are ignoring facts presented here that conflict with your established beliefs.


I will refrain from acknowledging you from now on. It's not worth my time.

Aha, there you go. You can't answer him logically and have no wish to acknowledge the points he made so you ignore him........welcome to the world of the ignorant.



posted on Dec, 28 2012 @ 11:12 AM
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Originally posted by HairlessApe
Look up colloquial theory, then look up scientific theory. They aren't the same.
The laws of science create scientific theory.

An example of this is Newton's laws constituting the theory of gravity. Yes, gravity is a theory.

And why SHOULD I give your idea any creedence whatsoever without evidence?
edit on 28-12-2012 by HairlessApe because: (no reason given)


You're confusing theorems that can be proven with theories and postulates that cannot. Then blindly worshipping the whole shebang without question. All while mocking divergent views, dismissing them as having no credence in the name of science. Evidence is meaningless to a blind mind.



posted on Dec, 28 2012 @ 11:27 AM
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Originally posted by yorkshirelad
reply to post by FormerSkeptic
 

No he isn't. He answered clealry but did comment that you are ignoring facts presented here that conflict with your established beliefs.


I will refrain from acknowledging you from now on. It's not worth my time.

Aha, there you go. You can't answer him logically and have no wish to acknowledge the points he made so you ignore him........welcome to the world of the ignorant.


This is like claiming the mere equation 1+5-2=4 fully explains the vast differences between the Super String Theory and Quantum Theory. Except he took an entire page to smugly define the purity of the plus and minus functions. Didn't even get to the awesome equal sign.

So yeah, quoting it again at this point and noting the lack of rebuttal is a perfect display of Ignorance! I'm quite amused that you stumbled onto it.



posted on Dec, 28 2012 @ 11:49 AM
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Originally posted by 0zzymand0s
reply to post by FormerSkeptic
 


But how gradual is gradual?

There is considerable evidence that humans developed a tolerance to lactose (in general) thanks to the domestication of milk producing animals only 5 - 9K years ago. That's lightning fast on an evolutionary scale. There is also the Tibetan adaptation to high altitudes, which is thought to have occurred over the last 3K years.

IF human brains stopped "evolving" 30K years ago, than perhaps it is because there was no need to evolve further until the industrial revolution, about 200 years ago. But that's not even the biggest change. I can theorize that the most recent impetus to human-brain evolution occurred only 25 years ago -- with the rise of a "public Internet." In other words, we don't know how fast human beings actually evolve or adapt to external stimuli, because we are in the nascent stages of what is arguably the greatest augmentation-to-human-intelligence in tens of thousands of years: the ability to "know" novel things in (near) real-time.

Sorry for skipping this earlier, but I'm not sure what you're getting at.

If indeed the industrial revolution had started another mutation to continue the human revolution, it would be washed out at best. I may not even doubt that a more clever, perhaps larger-brained generation was begotten by the great titans such as Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie. Maybe all the Rockefeller descendants have 2% larger brains. Maybe all the Carnegie descendants have 160+ IQ.

But with the hordes of better-looking, more immune, more likable humans running around, the Rockefellers and Carnegies can hardly competitively outbreed the curve. Not that some of them wouldn't try. Mutations at the lower end offsets again.

And to put it back on topic, relatively "random" events like the industrial boom cannot explain evolution. It would have to be much more severe, much more sustained, much more helpful for survival — AND — apply either globally to all living creatures or apply perpetually to the ideal one. Brain size in itself is not a universal culmination of evolution. If it is, then again it would explain the multitude of extraterrestrial large brains!

You just can't have it both ways. Large brain is either universal or it isn't.
edit on 28-12-2012 by FormerSkeptic because: fixed quote



posted on Dec, 28 2012 @ 12:27 PM
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In appreciation of the more open minded readers here, I'll go out on a limb again, if only in summary.

In the bigger scheme of things, there's actually no scientific proof that the naturally superior creature on Earth has to be an upright, bi-pedal, big-brained, mostly hairless, relatively weak-boned, soft-skinned mammal. The form factor alone is not universal by any parameter of physics or biology.

On the other hand, there's growing evidence that humans are ill-suited to live on Earth. There's countless incurable cancers. You put a completely nude random person today in a wild jungle, and his chances for survival beyond a few weeks is slim to none. Human physiology simply did not evolve for survival on Earth. Plain truth.

You have to claim that all the power is in the brain. But is that a natural truth? Humans breed like a virus yet kill each other in greed. Where's the natural benefit of the huge brain? Survival how? There's hardly any balance among humans (witness wars), none between humans and other species, hardly any between humans and the environment. Humans just rape everything.

Then in view of the finer complexities of all life forms on the planet, absolutely everything else has evolved in response to an environmental need or purpose. Life on Earth simply unfolded. Witness true evolution. Yet there's absolutely no need or purpose to develop an abstract-thinking brain that only destroys the same environment that created it! How is that evolution? It's more like an invasion!

Now there's evidence of human genome deterioration?!

Humans at best are just an accident.

Some of us humans may call it a happy accident while others insist we're naturally defined as the center of the entire universe. What arrogance.

So whereas life has evolved on Earth for hundreds of millions of years in grand epoch after grand epoch, humans suddenly pops up in relatively short time — AND — threatens to destroy everything just as quickly!

Now, in consideration of an advanced extraterrestrial big-brained creature that has revealed itself (only through modern human technology nonetheless, namely the camera), the greatest evidence is found to perfectly fit the human puzzle — we're simply seeded by their kind!

We can debate the details and theories such as the circumstances surrounding the relatively odd, relatively sudden development of the primate line, but in the bigger picture, extraterrestrial seeding is virtually self-evident.
edit on 28-12-2012 by FormerSkeptic because: typo's



posted on Dec, 28 2012 @ 01:09 PM
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reply to post by FormerSkeptic
 


Oh, come on. You realize that the "relatively random" industrial revolution grew the human population of this planet from around a billion to well over 6 billion today, right? I'm fairly certain that industrialization has produced more tangible benefits to human survival than almost any other factor in the last 2 centuries.

My on-topic point was that human beings did not stop adapting or evolving 30 thousand years ago. That is nonsense. Lastly -- and this goes to my first point, really -- there is no testable hypothesis here. There is no way to know how "intelligent" our distant ancestors were, or whether the process of continuous mutation (or drift) is creating "smarter" or "dumber" humans, overall.

We should probably stick to things we can actually measure and compare to one another.



posted on Dec, 28 2012 @ 01:17 PM
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reply to post by FormerSkeptic
 


Its only been a few decades that we have had this information on genetics... information we still dont fully understand.

Yet in this small window of time a few looneys have managed weave a story of alien origins and how our genetics are deteriorating with absolutly no evidence.

Of course i dont expect better......



posted on Dec, 28 2012 @ 02:14 PM
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Who said evolution was about developing more brain power?
Just like all other creationists you've got it all wrong. Furthermore, our livestyles/unhealthy environment might be the cause of this down-spiral.



posted on Dec, 28 2012 @ 05:38 PM
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Originally posted by Avgudar
Who said evolution was about developing more brain power?
Just like all other creationists you've got it all wrong. Furthermore, our livestyles/unhealthy environment might be the cause of this down-spiral.


That's in fact the counter-counter argument. I get confused.


So if brain power DID NOT evolve (you ask, "who said evolution was about developing more brain power?"), then who caused brain power to appear on Earth so suddenly relative to the hundreds of millions of years of life without brain power?



posted on Jan, 15 2013 @ 11:04 PM
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reply to post by Dispo
 


...there is in fact a current theory...

Whoops...

Theories aren't fact. But I get that you are believing that mutations "might" have improved our lot in the past. Thats a lot of mutating in a positive direction. It takes millions of the right kind to come up a notch, but only one negative to bring down the whole house of cards.

Mutations favor the decay of life not the betterment of it. Big leap to say it all went right so many times and so often to get where we are typing today.



posted on Jan, 15 2013 @ 11:06 PM
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reply to post by intrptr
 


All true, but I can't see your point.

Edit: wait no, not all true, it's a semantic argument but an important one, mutation does not favour anything, mutation is random you could say the statistically likely outcomes of mutation blah blah, but please don't use the word favour.
edit on 15-1-2013 by Dispo because: (no reason given)



posted on Jan, 16 2013 @ 03:09 AM
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Originally posted by FormerSkeptic
In appreciation of the more open minded readers here, I'll go out on a limb again, if only in summary.

In the bigger scheme of things, there's actually no scientific proof that the naturally superior creature on Earth has to be an upright, bi-pedal, big-brained, mostly hairless, relatively weak-boned, soft-skinned mammal. The form factor alone is not universal by any parameter of physics or biology.


OK, but that means nothing.


On the other hand, there's growing evidence that humans are ill-suited to live on Earth.


There are about 7 billion arguments otherwise.


There's countless incurable cancers. You put a completely nude random person today in a wild jungle, and his chances for survival beyond a few weeks is slim to none. Human physiology simply did not evolve for survival on Earth. Plain truth.


In what way is a 'nude random person in a wild jungle' representative of whether or not humans are "evolved" for survival on Earth? Suppose you shaved a tiger nude and dropped it off on an iceberg. How would it do? Poorly. How would it do if raised in its natural environment? Quite well.

It is biologically natural for humans to be raised in a structured society with culture, history, language and knowledge and family around.



You have to claim that all the power is in the brain. But is that a natural truth? Humans breed like a virus yet kill each other in greed. Where's the natural benefit of the huge brain? Survival how?


Haven't you noticed that there are 7 billion homo sapiens and many many fewer other apex predators of any other species by factors of hundreds or thousands? At some point that huge brain is an extraordinarily powerful force multiplier. Evolution hit the mother of all home runs.



Then in view of the finer complexities of all life forms on the planet, absolutely everything else has evolved in response to an environmental need or purpose. Life on Earth simply unfolded. Witness true evolution. Yet there's absolutely no need or purpose to develop an abstract-thinking brain that only destroys the same environment that created it! How is that evolution? It's more like an invasion!


Evolution doesn't care about "need" or "purpose". Humans unfolded too. Having cognitive power to discern reasonably true facts about the physical structure of the world and language to communicate it is an amazing capability.



We can debate the details and theories such as the circumstances surrounding the relatively odd, relatively sudden development of the primate line, but in the bigger picture, extraterrestrial seeding is virtually self-evident.
edit on 28-12-2012 by FormerSkeptic because: typo's


Other than the complete lack of evidence, and the complete presence of biological and genetic evidence relating homosapiens to other life.
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posted on Jan, 16 2013 @ 07:48 AM
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reply to post by FormerSkeptic
 


Some of us humans may call it a happy accident while others insist we're naturally defined as the center of the entire universe. What arrogance.

Agreed. I would add denial.



...in the bigger picture, extraterrestrial seeding is virtually self-evident.

I keep arguing that to the no proof people. Glad to hear it from someone else.



posted on Jan, 16 2013 @ 08:01 AM
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reply to post by Dispo
 


mutation does not favour anything, mutation is random you could say the statistically likely outcomes of mutation blah blah, but please don't use the word favour.

Sorry, I am not a Geneticist, correct me when I misuse a term. Is it not more prevalent for a mutation to result in the degeneration of a genome than in its improvement? Adaptation aside, when a flipper "needs" to change to an arm or a fin into a hand, isn't it presumptive to suggest that the genes "know" to 'improve" the separation of a fin into fingers?

How is "need" defined? Does the fish say to itself, gee now that I am crawling on land I sure could use the ability to grasp that fruit with my fin so I can reach to put it in my mouth? Does the evolutionary need to begin a chain of mutations "favor" the wishes of the life form to begin improving its lot "randomly"? How does the Gene "know" this? The land bound fish would starve before the millions of years necessary to make a fin into a hand (randomly). Or it would go back to the water in a few days to keep from dying of same. Then it would take another million for a fish to crawl out of the ocean and begin to "change".

Sorry, just my underdumacated take on the "evolutionary cycle".
edit on 16-1-2013 by intrptr because: spelling



posted on Jan, 16 2013 @ 02:27 PM
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reply to post by intrptr
 


Mutation is more likely to promote a negative change than a positive or neutral change, yes, but the chances of absolutely no change coming about as a result of mutation is orders of magnitude higher than any of those scenarios.

When mutation causes a change in an organism, natural selection works on it - if the change is advantageous, the organism survives and reproduces, if it is not advantageous, it does not survive and does not reproduce.

For example, think of rabbits in the countryside. Do you ever see mid-sized ones, or are they mostly small and large with little in between?

Natural selection favours the smaller and larger rabbits, as the smaller ones could more effectively hide from predators and are therefore more likely to reproduce, and the larger ones could more effectively run away from predators and are therefore more likely to reproduce. The ones in the middle had no special adaptation so were predated more, so less of them survived to reproduce, so their particular set of alleles was reduced in the population.

About your water-land question, there are many animals alive today that live both on the land and in water, seals, ducks, crabs, crocodiles... en.wikipedia.org...



posted on Jan, 16 2013 @ 06:35 PM
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Wouldn't the following logic negate this? I didn't really read the article or the OP so I don't know what it's about, so just a quick guess..

There are billions of people and we reproduce sexually, combining 2 genomes. Even if a bad genetic mutation occurred, it would be averaged into being meaningless by reproducing with another person without the defect on that part of their DNA.

Even if that weren't the case, good genes are almost always dominant and bad ones recessive.
edit on 1/16/13 by RedDragon because: (no reason given)



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