Is humanity blocking itself from evolution ?

This is a philosophical concept thread so please be aware that i am not enforcing this idea, it is open to all sorts of changes and rejection.

Lately i have been thinking about this concept where my reasoning always leads me to an odd conclusions namely ;
Are doctors, professors, scientists, and psychologists unwillingly blocking humanity from advancing to the next step ?

Humanity its basic shape and existance has been relatively the same for thousands of years, the only thing that realy changes are a few
proportions here and there based upon feeding habits. Knowledge can not be included because that is related to teaching and learning in an
effective manner.Looking at science i tend to notice the idea that a change in human existance is seen as something to be halted because its an
abnormality. It is as if science is making a charter of the superb 'normal' human to which everybody should be compared or be labeled
mallfunctioning.

However genetics state that a body and everything in it is subject to being individual and unique because of the gene diversity that it creates.
nobody looks the same, nobody sounds exactly the same, nobody has the same exact eyesight quality, nobody has the same strengths and weaknesses,
and to top that nobody thinks the same bacuse the advanced brain allows us to be individual.

However, instead of creating a clean slate model which can be used to temprarely measure a relative equality between people to help them if
they are perhaps mentally ill, thinking a bit off, physically unhealthy, it seems that this model is used more and more as an absolute which
does not allow change. This means that if the human brain changes because of genetics the change would be seen as a defect even if the human
functions like every other human.

I can find hunreds of conflicting problems with this, and politicians are not helping it with their mathematics being calculated to check
if their 'subordinates are safe 'normal' humans or something to behold as dangerous or to fear...

This rises the question ;
What is the use of trying to calculate an absolute 'normal' model as if humans are an exact same ?

I would like to know if there are other DoomWorlders thinking about stuff like this and have a reasoning around it.

FireFish said:

Lately i have been thinking about this concept where my reasoning always leads me to an odd conclusions namely ;
Are doctors, professors, scientists, and psychologists unwillingly blocking humanity from advancing to the next step ?

There is no next step. One of the first important things to understand about evolution is there is no planned goal.

Technician said:

There is no next step. One of the first important things to understand about evolution is there is no planned goal.

It is meant in the manner of natural progression not as an absolute form of being, we can not know how anything will end up.
Heck, for all we could imagine and if things can go freely humanity could have four arms and ET faces 4000 (if earth or humans still exist)
from now, or have long legs and look the same for the rest. You took that to literal.

FireFish said:

Lately i have been thinking about this concept where my reasoning always leads me to an odd conclusions namely ;
Are doctors, professors, scientists, and psychologists unwillingly blocking humanity from advancing to the next step ?

In a way, you could maybe argue that doctors and scientists are the next step. Probably it technically doesn't fit the definition of evolution, but adapting to our surroundings to survive better is what it's all about.

Mensa membership conceding
Tell me why and how are all the stupid people breeding?
Watson, it's really elementary
The industrial revolution
Has flipped the bitch on evolution

We have thought-evolution now.

Besides the obvious fact that evolution does not have a goal, there's also the fact that we have developed new systems to compensate for areas in which biology may be lacking. Our brains allow us to store, create, and share thoughts and ideas, which has given birth to an entirely new form of evolution.

For example, in the wild, most animals must rely on biological evolution to evade predators and catch prey. To compensate for weaknesses, they must spend millions of years developing sharper claws, tougher armor, bodies that allow for speed, or camouflage. We don't have to rely on this. Starting with our first intelligent ancestors, we learned we could fend off predators with fire, and use sticks and stones to kill predators and prey alike. Over time, this technology developed to the point where now we have high-power weapons that outclass anything natural, biological evolution could ever give us, and sturdy shelters which can keep out any predator. Teeth and claws are all well and good, but I'll take the larger brain that allows one to develop machine guns, thank you very much.

geekmarine comes in with a bombshell, and i have a but.
currently humans are using medicine for the smallest of things which barely harm, and we by example also use massive amounts of sunblock.
Creations of our cunning brains. If humanity overconsumes these it could trigger a response where the body assumes it needs a lower natural resistance
to all those things because external additions are fooling it. More and more people are allergic to stuff our grandparents waded trough as if it was
nothing. Going from food, to dust, to bacteria, and everything along that line. the common expression of macho elderly ;
'we where tougher back then, now eat your vegetables !' upon which somebody gets hospitalized because of vegetable allergies.

(i like to debate / discuss. i know, its irritating.)

However, I'll take the minor disadvantages over the time and effort required to develop resistances naturally. Our skin may be less resistant to sunlight, but sunscreen more than compensates for that, and allows us to live in a far greater diversity of climates. Allergies may be a minor nuisance, but they're nothing compared to the numerous deadly illnesses that we have found ways of combatting. And it honestly may be very well that our ancestors suffered allergies just as much as we do, it's just that they complained less about them because they had far greater concerns - when you're busting your ass just to stay alive, you're less likely to complain about a minor case of the sniffles. And actually, it's been suggested that allergies themselves were originally beneficial, in that they helped the body resist parasites.

It's easy to say that because we complain about such minor things, our bodies have become weaker - I find it more likely, though, that the real reason is more likely that as we've found ways of coping with the more severe hardships, we basically have more free time to complain about the little things, rather than the little things actually becoming more prevalent. And there's even some more serious issues that have cropped up. Take obesity, for example. Our ancestors didn't have to worry about obesity, but that's because they did have to worry about starving to death. And since obesity is a problem that can be addressed through lifestyle changes, I think it's worth the added risk of facing an obesity epidemic if it means far fewer people are starving. We may complain about obesity, but only because we don't have a frame of reference to see how much worse things were before.

Focusing on the pain makes it more painfull.
So that aspect of using substances with small benfits vs small annoyances could easily be replaced with having a harder time or maybe
more weakness in line of thinking around it. By example yelling 'OUCH' to then realise you barely felt anything. The reverse could be
applied to materialism ; i can afford it so i will use it. I have it, but i want more for my comfort. if i do not, i will feel slightly annoyed.

Our thinking changes us, but nature is not allowed to do more then our thinking will permit.

FireFish said:

geekmarine comes in with a bombshell, and i have a but.
currently humans are using medicine for the smallest of things which barely harm, and we by example also use massive amounts of sunblock.
Creations of our cunning brains. If humanity overconsumes these it could trigger a response where the body assumes it needs a lower natural resistance
to all those things because external additions are fooling it. More and more people are allergic to stuff our grandparents waded trough as if it was
nothing. Going from food, to dust, to bacteria, and everything along that line. the common expression of macho elderly ;
'we where tougher back then, now eat your vegetables !' upon which somebody gets hospitalized because of vegetable allergies.

(i like to debate / discuss. i know, its irritating.)

Evolution doesn't work like that. You don't pass allergies to your children through genes. Populations only adapt to specifically suit changed environments when members lacking the change die off. A society that prevents nearly every member from dying before reproducing will probably increase its genetic diversity over the long term unless they start selectively breeding.

The only way you have to worry about our pampered selves being less suited to the environment is if a plague or a nasty nerd revenge scheme kills off the people of apparently tough constitutions.

I remember some article explaining how the heads of certain races are getting bigger much quicker than others, I don't remember exactly but there was a thread on it here a year or so ago.

Keep in mind that Eric Harris wore a shirt that said "natural selection". And forced eugenics violates the libertarian concept of self ownership.

Mutation is random (natural selection of mutations is cumulative and non random, based on selection pressure in the environment of mutations). The vast majority of mutations are harmful because there's so many possible directions to mutate and most don't 'fit' in a direction that improves fitness to reproduce offspring. Human dna still mutates slowly, but most environmental selection is gone, thus most people survive to potentially pass on these cumulative (mostly) harmful genetic mutations to offspring who in turn can pass them on. If that keeps up, the genetic code of humans might 'muddy' similar to old age. Like white hair, wrinkles etc- dawkins thinks this is due to late acting harmful genetic mutations. Such mutations are still selected/passed to offspring because they are late acting; the individual can reproduce offspring before those 'old age' harmful mutations trigger. Human DNA could plausibly degenerate so 'oldness' gets younger and younger, like 7 year olds with white hair and wrinkles. Still, selection will at least choose people who have arms and mouths so they can still survive by eating twinkies. By then, the accumulation of brain mutations will probably make us stupid enough that our pets will learn to regard us as a food source, but maybe our pan perception mutations will degenerate so we don't really care if they do. Luckily, there is still sexual selection, also known as involuntary celibacy, so people like me can't infect your stupid gene pool, as if I want potentially infinite copies of pieces of myself crystalized in that downward spiral anyway. I guess I wrote enough stupid stuff for awhile.

Technician said:

There is no next step. One of the first important things to understand about evolution is there is no planned goal.

Perhaps is a "natural setting", but I fail to see why evolution can't be guided by a sentient civilization.

Aliotroph? said:

Evolution doesn't work like that. You don't pass allergies to your children through genes. Populations only adapt to specifically suit changed environments when members lacking the change die off.

deficiencies in the human gene / dna are passed on if they are dominant enough, sun allergies and heavy reactions to sun by example is
an inheritable trait. Everything you are and have as an individual human is inside your genes (dna structure), so that is why pale people
with alergic or comparable reactions to the sun can have direct offspring with the same problem, or it can skip a few generations in the
family tree.

To simplify this with Basic biology lessons schools teach you around the age of 13, two blonde people can have a black haired child if both parents
inherited dominant genes from their parents or grandparents, but if one of both has natural dominance it will counter it and they will have a blond child or perhaps brown. This is also true for weaker immune systems, geneticly inheritable diseases and eventualy if bad enough allergies.

gggmork said:

To long to go friendly quote warrior

Despite your title, this made sense and i could perfectly figure out what you meant. :)

hardcore_gamer said:

Perhaps is a "natural setting", but I fail to see why evolution can't be guided by a sentient civilization.

"Sentient civilization"?

It can, and it is. The result can be seen in the variety of animal breeds and plant cultivars.

Applying it to human, though, means you literally consider humans like chattel, and not like persons. Eugenism is only a good idea in the minds of racist totalitarians.

FireFish said:

Everything you are and have as an individual human is inside your genes (dna structure)

Nope!

Genes are not the only factor, far from it. Identical twins, despite having the exact same genes, can differ greatly, as has been shown in a few cases where the old idea of "twins separated at birth" happened.

Also, the human organism is extremely symbiotic. We have plenty of microorganisms living inside us (and they are especially important in the digestive tract), and they aren't part of our DNA. They're part of our environment and upbringing. And they do affect how we develop during our childhood, and they do even affect our hormonal balance and therefore our behavior.

hardcore_gamer said:

Perhaps is a "natural setting", but I fail to see why evolution can't be guided by a sentient civilization.

Humans can use artificial selection to clumsily breed Ray Comfort 'pop the top' bananas or retarded tigers:
http://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/Retarded_f029dc_1871820.jpg
but evolution is far 'smarter' than us (smart enough to create us), in a sense; in another its a simpleton. Its a mass search algorithm operating on reality with the entire environment as its input, operating massively parallel. It is not phased in the slightest by the tiniest size scales or the largest time scales. Look at detail in diatoms:
http://osp.mans.edu.eg/abuzied/Diatom%20%28arachnoidiscus%20sp%29.jpg
And I've seen a documentary on lowly sperm, how each species has completely uniquely evolved sperm with all these complex sub behaviors etc, almost like a miniature evolution of its own animal-like species. No way a human computer is going to out compute reality or get close or have all the data from all size scales of the environment as an input.

Gez said:

Genes are not the only factor, far from it. Identical twins, despite having the exact same genes, can differ greatly, as has been shown in a few cases where the old idea of "twins separated at birth" happened... Also, the human organism is extremely symbiotic. We have plenty of microorganisms living inside us.

Indeed, indeed, there are more factors. But the base ingredients to the initial start are inside your genes which are a mixture between two different family
pools and they decide the bigest parts. and for the organisms, that is why you need to be carefull with your Actimel, Activia, and Yakult and 'organism'
drinks in general because if they work, they can damage your balance. :)

It is easy to accidently write in absolutes when trying to explain why a bad point was a bad point, my bad !
*Note that some typos can slip in because badly responding keyboard keys.

geekmarine said:

And since obesity is a problem that can be addressed through lifestyle changes, I think it's worth the added risk of facing an obesity epidemic if it means far fewer people are starving.

Yep - fewer people starving, while the overweight majority suffer from malnutrition. I'm not sure which is worse, depriving people of food or expecting them to live like factory farm livestock on cheap-but-filling junk that isn't nutritionally balanced.

Back on topic - the human animal is smart enough to think he can "play God" and nudge evolution along a path of his choosing, but lacks the sagacity to know when he shouldn't. Like any genre-conforming science horror movie, the outcome is predictable.

You don't pass allergies to your children through genes.

You do, actually.

GreyGhost said:

Like any genre-conforming science horror movie, the outcome is predictable.

Is it odd that this reminds me of the Asgard in stargate ?
Unable to reproduce and with a limited genepool they where in their fictional presence doomed to clone themselevs until that failed.

Dawkins calls the set of all potential (the vast majority of which have never evolved) genetic beings 'biomorph land' I'm pretty sure. Like the genes CAN program for a platypus with an elephants trunk and wings, even though they haven't yet and likely won't, maybe even creatures as large as planets assuming they can code in a way to live with gravity and have enough resources to build their bodies.. the potential is there. But that means terrifying things. Somewhere in biomorph land, exist hideous horrifying things, also wonderful things, possibly waiting for a mad intelligence to solidify them into reality. For example, genes currently have and are capable of coding for a human brain. Well navigate biomorph land a small degree in 27 dimensional directions and you have genes that code for a brain that is the size of a house, only as dedicated as possible to perceiving pain, an entire bio-supercomputer that experiences reality a million times more vividly than us only through a lens of unspeakable misery. Navigate a small degree in a bunch of other dimensions through the landscape of potential forms and maybe this same being can live nearly forever, encased in a shell that protects it from itself so it can't suicide out of its misery. This being exists somewhere out there in potential land, the genes probably can code for it. And if there's nearly infinite multiverses out there, perhaps in at least one this poor creature does exist. Perhaps one of the multiverses sprung a leak of unstoppable evil, and all conscious inhabitants are like this and the algorithms run in a way that makes the evil worse and worse. Perhaps this multiverse is our own and perhaps the process has just begun.

The seemingly endless possibilities of life finding a way to exist, but bound by rules of mass and energy. Perception of reality is what our body and
mind can make us feel, hear, see, and think. But what if something takes the building blocks of life to create the unforseen which could be suffering
and pain only to gain more insight. it could be called an evil.

The precipe of many movies exploring the concept.

Wait wait wait, what's all this about not passing down allergies? Because it's a negative thing? Yes, allergies are genetic. And while negative, they're not negative enough to be selected against. Aside from rare instances, few people die from allergies, or are so unfit as to be unable to breed and pass their genes down to their children. As someone, I believe it may have been Dawkins, but I may be misremembering that, said, evolution isn't "Survival of the fittest," it's, "Survival of the good enough." A mutation can occur that has no net benefit or is even slightly harmful, but as long as it isn't catastrophic to the point where it interferes with one's ability to reproduce, it can still be passed down. That's one thing people tend to miss - evolution does not lead to perfection. It's one of those problems we run into because of our tendency to anthropomorphize the process. We give it human traits - if we were in charge of evolution, and could think of a better way of doing something, we'd do that instead and not waste time with a more inefficient system. Evolution isn't sentient though, it has no plan, it's like a group of Teamsters just looking to get the job done as quickly and with as little effort as possible, even if the job isn't perfect.

So you have a gene where, as I pointed out, allergies have been theorized to help combat parasites. It's a little overzealous though, and makes people feel miserable even when there's nothing wrong. But because resisting parasites is a good thing, and feeling a little crappy isn't too negative a consequence, ultimately the benefits outweigh the inconvenience, and thus the gene gets passed down.

It is like a form of heuristics in nature forming a possible solution when effective, anti bodies.
But if the heuristic fails it attacks the own body it belongs to. It would be the same as an Antivirus heuristic
Attacking your own computers 'normal' files when it Calculates it to be an infection, false positive.

I don't even know if that analogy is really accurate. I mean, an antivirus accidentally taking out system files would pretty quickly render your computer inoperable, and allergies are usually a minor nuisance (aside from food allergies, which tend to be more dangerous). I'd say it's more like the Windows security system going haywire and demanding the admin password just to launch the calculator or something.

Actually, antivirus going berserk is more akin to what happened with my neural condition (dammit, why does everything keep going back to that?). I mean, that was my immune system attacking and destroying my nervous system, which I could totally see being compared to an antivirus going nuts and deleting system files.

Cleanest reasoning and philosophy thread i have ever seen on a forum.

I've heard in some documentary about some fisherman village in which people evolved the ability to see clearly underwater, presumably due to extended periods of time spent underwater throughout many generations. It was something about retina adaptation if I recall correctly.

FireFish said:

deficiencies in the human gene / dna are passed on if they are dominant enough, sun allergies and heavy reactions to sun by example is
an inheritable trait.

But someone using or not using sunscreen (as per your example) has nothing to do with this unless using sunscreen or not using it causes a group of people with or without a certain gene to die before they reproduce or conversely allows them to consistently out-breed others that do the opposite.

geekmarine said:

"Survival of the good enough."

Selection is probability based though. A slightly better gene will have a slightly higher probability of being selected in the population as a whole. I'm going by hazy memory and couldn't find whatever I was searching for but something about environmental conditions not being constant, like an eye might be good enough but environmental light conditions aren't constant, so a good enough eye in daytime might not be good enough at nighttime (dawkins might have been talking about something completely different there I don't remember).

Also there's this book I haven't read but got the gist of 'why we get sick the new science of darwinian medicine' that basically says something like a high fever might have evolved as a good thing for us/ a defense (raise temperature to kill off undesirables etc... sort of like when japanese bees cover a japanese hornet in a ball and vibrate to kill it by raising the temperature of the ball middle to 117 degrees F which they can tolerate but it can't which you can see in youtube) so having medicine reduce a fever might be working against the system rather than helping (or something).

I get the concept gggmork, but what I really meant was, it's not necessarily about being the best. Like I've pointed out, there are other animals faster than us, or strong, or with better eyesight, but we're never going to develop those features naturally because we don't need them to survive. Yeah, improvements are usually favorable, but there's the issue of diminishing returns to keep in mind. For a species that doesn't need extra benefits in a given area, even a favorable mutation might not catch on if it doesn't grant a pronounced advantage, and there may be disadvantages, as well, such as increased energy consumption or susceptibility to injury or disease (can't think of an immediate example, but as a counterpart, phones could be made lighter and smaller, but at an increased risk of breaking - we accept tradeoffs of using more durable materials that may make a phone heavier and/or more bulky than we'd desire, but a slightly less convenient phone is worth it over a phone that's lighter but more likely to break).

I think I kinda went off on a tangent there, but I'm trying to clarify that when I say "good enough," I don't mean that improvements never happen - just that in all things, there are tradeoffs, and so it's not about being the absolute best, just better than the rest.