World Going to Hell!

[Heathen]

(23-10-2013 08:23 PM)evenheathen Wrote:  

(23-10-2013 06:49 PM)Dom Wrote:  Disorders thrive - visible ones. They were not around when I was a kid, no one had a visible disorder except for Downs syndrome.

A coworker of mine was taking about this very thing this morning. His theory seems plausible, it's technology. We have improved our medical technology so much that babies that would have never survived fifty years ago now have a much higher survival rate. Preemies have overwhelming odds of survival these days, along with the conditions that may be caused by premature birth.

Natural selection isn't being allowed to follow it's natural course, and those that survive with conditions that are hereditary are much more likely to live and pass on these conditions. So they become much more prevalent.

I'm not sure he's correct, but it seems logical to me. Same reason people are living to a ripe old unnecessary age.

This is something that a lot of people have a hard time discussing rationally and I think that it's because we are discussing our own species and have a hangup about us being somehow different from any other species on this planet. Modern medicine and technology is preserving and even enhancing the quality of life of people who would otherwise have not passed on their genes even a century ago. It is tempting to think that we are, for the first time, affecting the evolution of our own species. Not true. We've been doing that demonstrably for at least 10,000 years and rather intensely for the last 100 years, but I would argue that we've been doing it all along. All forms of life do this, we just think that we are somehow "special". Natural selection is in fact taking it's course. It's easy to understand the concept of natural selection when talking about worms, fishes or finches. Homo Sapiens is a little more complicated but once you get past the ego, it's really just the same thing.

[evenheathen]

(23-10-2013 09:03 PM)Heathen Wrote:  This is something that a lot of people have a hard time discussing rationally and I think that it's because we are discussing our own species and have a hangup about us being somehow different from any other species on this planet. Modern medicine and technology is preserving and even enhancing the quality of life of people who would otherwise have not passed on their genes even a century ago. It is tempting to think that we are, for the first time, affecting the evolution of our own species. Not true. We've been doing that demonstrably for at least 10,000 years and rather intensely for the last 100 years, but I would argue that we've been doing it all along. All forms of life do this, we just think that we are somehow "special". Natural selection is in fact taking it's course. It's easy to understand the concept of natural selection when talking about worms, fishes or finches. Homo Sapiens is a little more complicated but once you get past the ego, it's really just the same thing.

Oh sure. I agree completely. But like you said we've been doing it "rather intensely for the last 100 years". Not a matter of us being special. But I don't think it's unreasonable to suspect that our ability to affect the way our species is evolving is due to the fact that we can now prevent and treat sickness and increase survival rates of a mass amount of our species who would otherwise not live to reproduce.

Like I said, I don't know if it's completely correct, but I think it's one plausible explanation.

Edit: You forgot to close a bracket

[evenheathen]

Won't post my reply. Damned interwebs.

Edit: of course it posts this one, but still not my reply.

Oh well, not that important...

[evenheathen]

Quote:Edit: You forgot to close a bracket

God? That you?



Thanks.

[Heathen]

I did not open a bracket but if it makes you happy, here you go:

]



I'll argue grammar and punctuation all day long but never brackets. And I could care less about asterisks.

[Revenant77x]

(23-10-2013 09:43 PM)evenheathen Wrote:  

Quote:Edit: You forgot to close a bracket

God? That you?



Thanks.

Naw as opposed to God I actually fixed the problem.

[evenheathen]

(23-10-2013 09:49 PM)Heathen Wrote:  I did not open a bracket but if it makes you happy, here you go:

]



I'll argue grammar and punctuation all day long but never brackets. And I could care less about asterisks.

Hehe. Nah, that edit in my post was from whichever god, I mean mod fixed my post. I forgot to close a bracket.

[evenheathen]

Rev, it's nah, not naw.

[Heathen]

(23-10-2013 09:53 PM)evenheathen Wrote:  

(23-10-2013 09:49 PM)Heathen Wrote:  I did not open a bracket but if it makes you happy, here you go:

]



I'll argue grammar and punctuation all day long but never brackets. And I could care less about asterisks.

Hehe. Nah, that edit in my post was from whichever god, I mean mod fixed my post. I forgot to close a bracket.

Got it. Just havin' sum fun.

The very idea that we are sitting perhaps a thousand miles or more away, typing at each over the wires about a bracket reinforces my original point that our species has evolved too much ego to actually see ourselves as what we truly are.

[Revenant77x]

(23-10-2013 10:01 PM)Heathen Wrote:  

(23-10-2013 09:53 PM)evenheathen Wrote:  Hehe. Nah, that edit in my post was from whichever god, I mean mod fixed my post. I forgot to close a bracket.

Got it. Just havin' sum fun.

The very idea that we are sitting perhaps a thousand miles or more away, typing at each over the wires about a bracket reinforces my original point that our species has evolved too much ego to actually see ourselves as what we truly are.

Mostly hairless Apes dressed up in silly clothes?