Is evolution going backwards?

Evolution does not move forward or backward. It can only continue. Random mutations happen and if these random mutations lead to that organism no longer being valid ( no longer able to exploit or survive in it’s environment), well though luck for that organism. But the amount of change per generation is, as pointed out by someone else so slight as to be insignificant compared to the socio-environmental effectors on our health wealth and happiness.As to ‘fit’ and ‘unfit’, in regard to natural selection, I would like Contracycle to define what he means by these terms, as natural selection is always happening. After all we are more ‘advanced’ than monkeys for example, but dose that mean that there should be no monkeys left? After all we are ‘fitter’? No they are an equally valid solution to surviving their environment as we are to ours. However If we have to compete for the same space, things are likely to go badly for the monkeysAs for Humans then there are people more suited to surviving the human jungle than others. This isn’t down to who has money and who doesn’t, but more to do with how the individual deals with the dangers and opportunities that the human jungle offers. After all even the richest man can die lonely and broken with no family where as the poorest man can live a long and happy life with a loving supportive family. People kill themselves because they can not cope with the stress of modern human life. These people are not able to successfully exploit their environment to survive and are thus not ‘fit’. Believe me natural selection is alive and well in today’s world.And as modern medicine improves the boundary of a valid ‘fit’ human increases. Not to many years a go Prof Stephen Hawkins would have died early or been locked away in an asylum. No one would have considered him ‘fit’ but today due to medicine and changed attitudes to certain disabilities he is in ‘comparatively good health and one of the most acclaimed minds of our species. There are many people who can thank their survival to modern technology, where as previously these people could have been classified as ‘unfit’.As I said natural selection is still alive and well. You just have to know where to look.

but as the increase in wealth and tech improves the health and longevity of people in the west we need to reduce our population production to maintain a balance. In less developed societies that do not benefit from the west's tech and wealth tend to die sooner and in larger numbers thus the people there tend to, as far as we understand it over produce. The simple fact is due to the attrition on their numbers they need to produce many offspring just to stand still. What wealth and the technological advantages it brings means that each individual stands a far better chance of surviving to reproduce than those in less developed areas. Guess you say quality over quantity.This message has been edited by ohnhai, 01-06-2005 12:38 AM

Ok the quality over quantity argument was a bad choice and does. if read in a certain light, lead you to disturbing conclusions (and ones which I find abhorrent) So I retract that phrase.I was simply trying to make the point that a drop in population growth must not be seen as being the mal-productive, as this is natures way of balancing out the population to a ‘sustainable level’. After all if we in the ‘developed world’ reproduced at the rate of those in ‘un-developed’ areas then we would have a serious problem on our hands. (Not that we don’t already). Where wealth comes into it is that despite the slow down in growth, each new child has a vastly better chance of reaching maturity and reproducing, than his/her counterpart in the ‘third world’.I guess what I was trying to say was where wealth wins as a strategy is because it created a ‘quality’ of life that is far better at bringing each child to maturity than a strategy that relies mainly on ‘quantity’ of life. In this regard I would much rather prefer the ‘Quality’ route for my self and children rather then the ‘Quantity’ route. However as each strategy does work they must bee seen as equally valid.

I didn’t say ‘Quality’ was overall better than ‘Quantity’. What I said it was better at bringing EACH child to maturity, where as ‘Quantity’ plans for and builds in protection against a far higher rate of attrition. And here’s where a high quality of life (comparatively) ‘wins’ as a strategy, not against other solutions but, in and of itself as a method of sustaining the species, within available recourses. Sure the ‘Quantity’ solution produces more individuals but those populations are also prone to devastating culls through natural disasters such as floods and drought, not to mention man made disasters like wars, then it needs to over produce to survive these periodic culls in numbers.It’s not a question of one being better than the other but what is right for the socio-environmental situation in each area. So saying wealth is mal-productive in regard to survival of the species is in error as if our growth was not checked by birth control and a change in the social norms (i.e. smaller families) brought about through wealth and technology, then we would grow to truly unsustainable numbers exhausting our recourses even quicker than we are. And species that eats itself out of house and home does not survive.If the wealthy nations of the world actually got off their asses and put in good water, sanitation and power infrastructure into all the ‘undeveloped’ nations who have historically leant to the ‘Quantity’ strategy to perpetuate their numbers they would have to also adapt a more ‘Quality’ outlook or face a population explosion of frightening and unsustainable proportions. Both strategies are valid and of themselves ‘win’, but only for the situations that gave rise to them.

but as has been pointed out, (and lord help me for agreeing with Contra here) that due to our tecnology, and wealth, survival is no loger purely a question of biological fitness, at least for the human spieces.But I am probably arguing at cross points here as I obviously dont have a fully scientific grasp of biological fitness in the terms you are useing it. I would greatly aprecieate if you could point me in the directions of apropriate online texts or even apropriate books.yours Ohnhai