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Author Topic:   We are too humane.
sfs
Member (Idle past 2562 days)
Posts: 464
From: Cambridge, MA USA
Joined: 08-27-2003


Message 63 of 64 (214074)
06-04-2005 12:17 AM
Reply to: Message 53 by New Cat's Eye
06-02-2005 7:52 PM


Re: Modes of future human evolution
quote:
So, as we have become more humane, the differential survival of groups has had less of an impact on population structure. This supports the idea that being humane has a negative impact on how much evolution is occurring, and that being humane is preventing change.
This is backwards. Your premises are correct: genetics now plays a relatively small role in determining which humans reproduce (and how many offspring they have). Cultural, economic and other environmental factors play a larger role. What this means, however, is not that evolution has stopped for humans, but that it has increased. The major function of natural selection is not to produce change, but to prevent change. By helping more people to survive and reproduce, we are increasing the variation in our species.
My own guess is that the kind of mutation that would have the strongest selective advantage in the current human environment is one that made people want to have more children, since choice dominates the reproductive rate in much of the world. Whether such a mutation is possible I don't know.

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 Message 53 by New Cat's Eye, posted 06-02-2005 7:52 PM New Cat's Eye has not replied

  
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