I have a theory that humans are evolving backwards, or DE-evolving, however you want to say it. Natural selection is the engine that drives evolution. The problem, however, is that for natural selection to happen, the weak need to die off and the strong need to prosper and reproduce. For the past 10,000 years since civilization started, humans have decided that they are in some way above animals. We feel the need to protect the weak and feeble, because it would be less "human" of us to do otherwise. This means that stupid, genetically inferior people have just as good of a chance at reproducing as the better human specimens do. Look around you. The people that are physically fit, attractive, and have a higher IQ tend to wait until the time is right, they get married, and they pop out 1 to 4 kids on average. The degenerates of the world, however, reproduce like rabbits. I'm talking about these bucktooth hillbilly families with 15 kids, or people from the ghetto impregnating every disgusting person they can get their dick into. Watch an episode of Maury or Jerry Springer and you'll see what I mean. There is an advantage in our society to being attractive and smart, but it has nothing to do with ability to reproduce. You might land a better job, or be more liked by your peers, but reproduction is what drives evolution.
What kind of evolution are you talking about? EDIT: You mean like this? here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_devolution
I am talking about an increase in undesirable genetic traits of species due to human involvment. The article that you link to says that this idea is a biological fallacy. I agree that with most species, any evolutionary change couldn't possibly be devolution otherwise the change wouldn't have come about. When you put humans into the picture, however, things start to change. Take corn for example. Corn in its wild form has tiny little seeds and looks more like wheat than the corn we are familiar with. We have selectively bred it over thousands of years to produce the huge yellow ears of corn that we see today. We have obviously done this because it produces more food for us, not to make the species of corn more able to reproduce. Unfortunately we also bred out of it pest and disease resistance. We need to spray the crop with insecticides constantly because it has no natural resistance. Is this not a form of devolution through selective breeding? We made it better for human use, but as a species it is now worse off than it was thousands of years ago. If we were to set up an experiment where we take a group of humans and started killing off everyone who is not blind, eventually almost everyone would be blind. This would not normally happen in nature, but I believe that devolution is possible when a human influence is introduced.
Actually I think I read somewhere that because of all these drugs (those that are beneficial) our immune system is growing stronger. Don't hold me to that, but I just THINK I've read that.
I dont think this is true, most over the counter stuff just masks symptoms and most of the other stuff is used to fight/cure things our immune system can't (i think).
Ugh... no... just... no. Evolution does not presuppose any direction at all. It describes a PROCESS, not a direction (the concept of a direction of evolution is an ideology, not science). The term de-evolution has no meaning at all.
We all know that. The OP has specifically stated what he's talking about: It's the best term to use in talking about negatively evolving. Have you ever used the word "decelerate"? It's the same thing, there's either positive acceleration or negative acceleration but decelerate is just a good sounding word to use for negative acceleration. It's kinda been like that for all of human history though. The majority of the population will always be stupid. There will always be enough smart people to keep things going though.
Isn't it interesting how by your criteria the most reproductively successful should somehow not be selected for? Natural selection is just a process by which those traits that lead to greater reproductive success tend to become amplified throughout a population. If being dumb as a post and horny as a rabbit works better than being smart and of average sex drive then it stands to reason that the dumb horny people are going to have more kids. It's not a value judgment, it's not a statement of the way things should be or what the ideal person is like, it's just what is selected for. Being attractive, physically fit, and intelligent isn't necessarily the best strategy.
This is the plot, from wikipedia. "A narrator (Earl Mann) explains that in modern society, natural selection has become indifferent toward intelligence, so that in a society in which intelligence is systematically debased, stupid people easily out-breed the intelligent, creating, over the course of five centuries, an irredeemably dysfunctional society. Consequently, the children of the educated elites are drowned in a sea of sexually promiscuous, illiterate, alcoholic, degenerate peers" Seriously. The narrator says almost your entire OP word for word...
I believe in de-evolution to a certain point, like i believe people get more and more ignorant and unaware, i've seen these things happen all the time in real life, especially on the road. I believe, just like in the movie idiocracy will come true
I dont really see why you are worried about it. If you believe in evolution then you came from a rock thats what amazes me not the simple pety things you speek of but THAT WE CAME FROM A ROCK!!!!
this is not devolution this is what society puts out. People have been ignorant and unaware since the beginning of time and the reason for this is because people buy into whats put out.
You're not even in the same ballpark buddy. Where did you hear that evolutionists think we came from a rock? People who believe in evolution think that we came from bacteria. The bacteria came about most likely because of increasingly complex molecules like amino acids became one step more complicated and started to self replicate. People who don't believe in evolution frighten me. I'm not saying that our model of evolution is 100% correct, but that it is our best model we can come up with given the information we have gathered. This holds true for pretty much any scientific theory or principle, even gravity or thermodynamics. If you believe that a big man in the sky snapped his fingers to form every species, maybe a forum about science isn't for you.
I think that you've given the most interesting response so far. I think that before the advent of civilization, the smarter you are, the more likely you are to live. The more likely you are to live, the more likely you are to reproduce. Remember that the average life span in these days was probably not too far past puberty. Therefore 15,000 years ago or so evolution was going towards smarter and smarter people with every passing generation. These days the smart people have created a society where people that are dumb as a post have just as great a chance of living as smart people. they just go to a doctor and get all fixed up even though they are too stupid to understand that they are only alive because society is not as cruel and unforgiving as nature. Since in our society, dumb and smart alike make it past puberty, then the only traits that make reproduction more likely are hornyness and irresponsibility. As time goes on I believe we are becoming genetically inferior.