True but we are creating a man made environment for ourselves, meaning that we will evolve in our new environment the same way we adapted to a natural environment. Providing Darwin was right of course, but we should develop ways to expell the toxins of crap fast food, develop improved skeletal structures to cope with excess weight, digest dairy products better, have livers of steal to cope with our immense alcohol consumption, improved thinking patterns to cope with the higher demands on our craniums, the ability to sleep less hours etc. So we will not be fighting or halting evolution, just evolving in our new environment.

yes, that would do us much good. i would like something to get rid of the toxins of fast food otehr than eating lettuce every day and having to run like a mindless bored monley

good point mustang, but also we let well those who would die under evoloutiosn rule live ergo 'damaging' the gene pool

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Think of all technological advances over the last 50 years. Each one is to make life easy. For instance, you use one on a daily basis, your PC. This cut the use of pen and paper, mail services and a few others.

An elevator replaced stairs, cars replaced horse and cart.

In the future we will have robots that do the housework for us. This is human evolution, just not in the way you are looking at it. Until the world ends,this will continue to get easier for us and for a lazy guy like me, its paradise!

interesting ideas. Im of the belief that through technology we're eliminating the evolutionary process. We're lazy enough that we cant wait several generations for a change that 10 million dollars will solve in several years. Why wait for our bodies to naturally deal with alcohol better or for us to be able to neutralise the toxins in burgers when we can sell pills that do it for us. Medicine keeps people alive that nature doesnt want alive, survival of the fittest is all about killing off the weak so the species gets stronger and while im humane enough to believe that everyone deserves a chance to live and lead a full life, we do so at the cost of progressing the species. In several generations we can irradicate many human afflictions by stopping people who WILL pass on deficient genes from doing so, but we're not going to. Our understanding of human genetics, while VERY risky indeed, can provide a solution though. People with birth defects can reproduce and have their sperm/eggs screened so that only the sperm/eggs make it and naturally killing off a hereditry (sp?) problem. Manipulating cells is obviously a bad idea, but tampering with the "luck" factor so that there is always a 99% chance that the problem wont get passed on would be a great step foward in curing medical problems in society.

Muscular evolution is what is most noticable though. Every generation moves faster, jumps higher, lifts more and out-performs the last time and again. Human physical ability is pushed all the time and because of that, because of the concious need to keep healthy and keep active, we're improving all the time. Likewise, because of the way many 1st world education systems work, the stuff kids are learning now is more advanced than the generation before them at that age. Human brains are being advanced slowly but surely, but just the areas that we know about. There's still parts of the brain which are unused, is the future of human potential, once we reach perfect equilibrium with our habitiats, when there's no more physical evolution left, when we're at the top of our "tech tree", will our brains start unlocking more areas. ESP & telekenisis have long been the staple diet of futuristic sci-fi for regions of human advance and its infinitely possible. I think eventually evolution HAS to stop. if we did all live in caves and understood that we had to allow evolution to keep going so we couldnt artificial substitute it, then eventually we would become perfectly adapted for cave life and evolution would stop. Its when changes occur to our environment that we start evolving. But you're right DSQ, we need to stop making life easier for ourselves in many cases else evolution will never be able to catch up.


Seek the truth
Behold the truth
Reveal the truth
That is the law and the whole of the law

oy, there are a lot of people that are out there that need to get out of the gene pool. But we do need them around. I'm not going to flip burgers at McDonalds, or be a car salesmen, or a lawyer for that matter...




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Edit: Darn links...

Edited by - [email protected] on 11/17/2004 4:35:51 AM

Edited by - [email protected] on 11/17/2004 4:36:53 AM

I'm not so sure that humanity is getting more intelligent. I'm going to be brutally honest here and I don't wish to offend people but the following is based on a lot of generalisation.
If you look at the type of people who have a large number of children, they tend to be low income earners, quite often because they weren't able to get through high school since it was too hard for them and now they hold down menial jobs. Whereas the high-flying professionals who were intelligent enough to make it through university tend to have smaller families and fewer children. Since intelligence is largely determined by genetics, we should be finding that each generation has a progressively lower average IQ.

Its a logical way to look at it Rec. But will those with a somewhat lower IQ now evolve to have a higher IQ years down the line? It just probably won't be as high as those who already have a high intelligence.

@sirius: im not talking about removing people from the gene pool who hold low income jobs or never make anything of their lives, im talking about people with heredetry diseases or born with physical deformaties.

@rec: Yes maybe, but surely the world as a whole is getting smarter. They are teaching more advanced stuff earlier and earlier. Whether everyone being taught takes it all in and just drops out of school isnt important, whats important is the potential for learning is there. There's just social and economic reasons why theose kids dont succeed where others do.

Evolution? Bahh!

The more we poison ourselves with chemicals, be it drugs or preservatives, We, are daminging out linage and the ability to continue it with out damage or degrading it. As far as being smater, we have gained new ways to learn, there by retain more knowledge, but, have we gained the wisdom to use it?
Computers brind us things we might not ever see in our life times, but is it all of use? We need wisdom more than knowledge, to use what we have, and to extend our lives and the next generation as well.

i think we need a balance. We cant live waited hand on foot, for what if, Kaplat! something bad happens and suddenly life is hard. if you are tired from walking up the stairs...

but we cant run off and become nuts denoucing technology and burning computers

It's like all those sci-fi movies you see with aliens. They've grown so technologically advanced that they are pretty much just massive heads with little bodies. They don't need to be physically strong, they have ray guns

Seriously though, I doubt humans will ever reach that point. Especially if we remain the greedy, superfical people that we are. Look at Hollywood. Are you telling me someday we're gonna want a "Baywatch" with lifeguards that have big heads and little atrophied bodies?

Edited by - Sylverfysh on 11/17/2004 5:24:23 PM

i'll be dead by then lol....