This morning's discussion.
Humans in the developed world are the only animal to actively encourage the breeding of "inferior" successors.
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It's the afternoon now ;)
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bloody hell time moves on
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Natural selection suggests the weak die and the strong survive. Well in todays society of keeping diseased, mentally and physically handicapped people alive when they would have otherwise died and allowing them to have children, surely we are messing up the human gene pool for the future.
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My thoughts exactly.
Any with (many of the) the mentally adapt people working and perusing "careers" over families - we are producing less intelligent people. |
Does that mean if you prang your car or get ill you dont want the ambulance to be called!!
We studied this in biology at A level and it is a potential problem, but how many otherwise healthy people has medication saved the lives of? A moral issue you will never answer, but i am pro abortion when the child has a seroius birth defect Just my veiw, or have i got i wrong did you mean all the Trisha watching, job shy, dole claiming inbreds? |
Let's get rid of medicine altogether then (including band aids):D
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RayC - I didn't imply any of your suggestions! You came up with them all on our own.
Some of them are justified! |
Natural Selection is an important thing, the trouble is humans keep messing with it. In the 3rd world there is a culture that children look after their parents in their old age. Many children die before adulthood, so have a lot of children to ensure somebody is around to look after you. Once medicine etc steps in then the population explodes and the agriculture can't support them all. This kind of thin happened in the West, we got round the problem by plundering other countries and exploiting them to ensure we were OK.
It can only carry on for so long, if we slow down the evolutionary process by keeping the weaker genes in the pool, and continue to over populate and over farm we will end up wiping ourselves out and then something that is evolving well will come along and finish off the survivors :D |
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But that is a problem, you cannot let nature take it's course to an extent. You either do, or you don't there is no in between.
Hopefully I will be dead long before the inevitability that is everyone in the world being a chav. ;) Geezer |
Originally Posted by Jason Crozier
Not sure I understand that, any species evolves to survive changes, overcome adversity etc. yet you suggest we sit back and watch when we have evolved the ability to do something about it ? ... that's backwards fella :)
I am also surprised you throw Political correctness into the mix, I think it goes some way beyond that don't you ? |
It's been shown that natural selection doesn't work in favour of the most successful, most intelligent humans anymore though, the less successful, less intelligent ones are having far more babies and as a result reducing the average intelligence of the overall gene pool.
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Originally Posted by Jason Crozier
But we are part of nature ... ?
Going to hospital to have a broken leg mended is nature taking it's course isn't it ? I am not trying to propose a solution saying that we should stop treatment at point X and let people die. I am just saying we are creating an artificial situation where genes that are not beneficial to humans as a whole are being maintained in the gene pool, which is making the specied weaker, rather than stronger to changes in environment. The effects are going to take millenia to be seen I suspect and no doubt some people will say "Ahh but we will have cured all diseases and gene defects by then". Personally I doubt we will and I don't know that the world would be a better place even if we did. |
Avalanche - that was the point I was hopeing to raise
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Ah well it's not affected me
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speaking of articficially modifying our enviroment - are we pushing our selves toward a "gattica" like situation where we are having our gene's cleaned of any defects & advantageous genes promoted to improve the suitability / prosperity of an individual?
The technology is there - it's just we are bound by law not to impliment it |
Originally Posted by AvalancheS8
It's been shown that natural selection doesn't work in favour of the most successful, most intelligent humans anymore though, the less successful, less intelligent ones are having far more babies and as a result reducing the average intelligence of the overall gene pool.
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Originally Posted by OllyK
That is making the assumption that intelligence is the most important factor in surviving (propogating ones genes), personally I think it is way down the list
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Originally Posted by BlkKnight
speaking of articficially modifying our enviroment - are we pushing our selves toward a "gattica" like situation where we are having our gene's cleaned of any defects & advantageous genes promoted to improve the suitability / prosperity of an individual?
The technology is there - it's just we are bound by law not to impliment it I suspect that if people did start doing that, they inclination would be to "super purify" ones genes and choose 10 out of 10 ratings for every option, which in turn would probably be detremental. We need a degree of mutation and imperfection as some of them are beneficial to the changing environment. Humans would most likely choose to be "slim, tall, good looking, have a big penis / pair breasts" and forget about some of the more essential things! |
It's not the most important factor in OUR enviroment currently (when having babies) - but it is the most important in the corp world.
When / if our "natural" gene pool becomes saturated with the less intelligent baby-makers, is modifying it the only way to ensure the "intelligent" people strive? (without modifing the enviroment to discourage the baby-makers from prospering). Otherwise (eventually) we (humans) will be slipping backwards, surely only leading to our demise |
Some people shouldn't be allowed to paddle in the shallow end of the gene pool! ;)
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Originally Posted by AvalancheS8
Clearly it is (way down the list) since it more intelligent people are having less babies. It does kind of raise the question of whether natural selection works for humans though.
Intelligence is part of the natural selection process though. I am going to make a generalisation here, but for arguments sake, lets say more intelligent people breed less - becuase they would rather persue a career and material goods than have children. I also put forward that having an IQ over 140 is not required to survive, being able to find food, water, shelter and somebody to breed with is far more important (as the Chavs show :D ) So the for the survival of humans as a species, intelligence is not that important and so it is being bred out of the species in favour of things that allow the better procreation of the species. |
Originally Posted by BlkKnight
It's not the most important factor in OUR enviroment currently (when having babies) - but it is the most important in the corp world.
When / if our "natural" gene pool becomes saturated with the less intelligent baby-makers, is modifying it the only way to ensure the "intelligent" people strive? (without modifing the enviroment to discourage the baby-makers from prospering). Otherwise (eventually) we (humans) will be slipping backwards, surely only leading to our demise We need to separate advance in to advance in terms of genetic ability to survive in the environment and social advance in terms of material goods to make our lives comfortable. Comfort is not required for survival. So in terms of social yes we may go backwards, but in terms of suitability for the environment, we go forwards. |
Originally Posted by OllyK
I am going to make a generalisation here, but for arguments sake, lets say more intelligent people breed less
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Originally Posted by AvalancheS8
They do, I don't have the statistics to hand, but have seen them and they do produce less offspring.
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I think the thing that affects the human race is the ability to broadly communicate, and on a lower level, such as feelings of love, and hatred... we care for each other, and the human race likes to help one another. therefore if we see an injured person, we like to help - its in our nature...
IMHO this is what seperates us from lower intelligence - IE animals. |
Originally Posted by tucker101uk
I think the thing that affects the human race is the ability to broadly communicate, and on a lower level, such as feelings of love, and hatred... we care for each other, and the human race likes to help one another. therefore if we see an injured person, we like to help - its in our nature...
IMHO this is what seperates us from lower intelligence - IE animals. The point is that all of this is well and good and makes for a "pleasant" society, but it also makes us less strong genetically as so more and more less suited to our environment, which in turn could lead to our demise. It will be long after I am gone so I don't really give a rats ass, but human's have this rather nasty habit of living for now rather than the long term, all this rapid social evolution will need to be balanced out somewhere along the line, the planet cannot support it indefinately. |
Not sure I understand that, any species evolves to survive changes, overcome adversity etc |
I think you need to make the distinction between those that have merely suffered an injury and those that are carrying a genetic fault.
Clearly, advocating the removal of someone who would otherwise be of benefit to the gene pool based on the misfortune of injury is counterproductive. |
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