Are we, as mankind, devolving?

[Dup]

Like what cooks said, strip it down to the bare minimum and the most badass will survive. BUT like i said in a previous post, you put a gym junkie out in the wild, no electronics no house etc etc, and you put a boy scout/ army man in the wild, they gym junkie will not outlast the scout no matter how strong he is, UNLESS he is competing against other humans for dominance.

So my point as before, everyone should join the forces for a year to learn the skills the scout has so we get discipline and survival skills. Not saying your going to need them, but its better than being like Sheldon from BBT He wouldnt last 2 seconds in the wild lol

 

[Cook$]

again, that's not evolution. Being a gym junkie or a boy scout is not something that is inherited. Evolution is ALL about inherited qualitites.

 

[Cook$]

All true, although considering the human is a social animal, being able to interact with and manipulate one other is important. And I think being clever is still great for the species at the moment as it encourages the creation and use of tools to make survival easier.

Edit: another thought, being bad to members of your own group may lead to expulsion or exclusion, losing you communal advantages.

by being clever you can end up painting yourself into a corner though. Look at us today, we're pretty clever, we have our medicine and electricity, but if our situation changes, we're screwed. I mean, Stephen Hawking is pretty clever, but if it came down to it, I'd eat him.
Being the fittest means everything until your situation changes, and fittest means 'best equipped'. If you were an animal that had to run after it's food, your species would favour the fastest runners. But if you exhausted your food and began to depend on food that lived up trees, the better climbers would prevail. So it's survival of the best equipped within your present scenario. Adapt, or die. 99.99999% of all the species that have ever existed have died out for that reason. Although 'died out' is a bit misleading, an extinction can be based on a species evloving into something else.

I think we are evolved to fit our situation. I don't think we need to be best equipped anymore, as it is easy to survive. When it changes, we'll have to change. We won't see it though, we'll be gone by the time it happens. Say we have a total nuclear disaster and pretty much everyone dies. That's not evoultion. The evolution comes after, and it's not based on skills that we remember before the holocaust. It is dependant on physical traits that help us survive. Figuring out things like how to build a water filter from whatever you can find isn't evolution. We already know that. Capacity to learn is not a new evolutionary trait for us. We already have the capacity to learn new skills, hell, most dogs have that. Evolution would be another step forward from there, and I don't know what it would be. I think we are slowing down in our evolution and the only way for us to see any increase would be to seriously dilute the gene pool and breed the fittest.

I think a valid question would be considering the advances we are making in technology, medicine, etc, if our situation doesn't collapse, where do we evolve to next?

 

[Dup]

Not necessarily inherited..... all animals, bar the turtle and maybe lobster are taught how to survive by their parents. lions, birds, apes, humans, dolphins etc etc.... evolution doesnt mean you come out into life being able to rule the world

 

[NSKlad]

I think a valid question would be considering the advances we are making in technology, medicine, etc, if our situation doesn't collapse, where do we evolve to next?

Very valid indeed, hence my transhumanism comment and potentially posthumanism as well. Maybe we end up adapting our environment and/or ourselves through technology and genetics, which changes the evolutionary playing field even more than we already have.

 

[NSKlad]

Not necessarily inherited..... all animals, bar the turtle and maybe lobster are taught how to survive by their parents. lions, birds, apes, humans, dolphins etc etc.... evolution doesnt mean you come out into life being able to rule the world

I think instinct deserves a bit more credit than that!

 

[Cook$]

Not necessarily inherited..... all animals, bar the turtle and maybe lobster are taught how to survive by their parents. lions, birds, apes, humans, dolphins etc etc.... evolution doesnt mean you come out into life being able to rule the world

an inherited capacity to learn is what is important, not the skills themself. And again, not in all circumstances

 

[Buddha 3]

Not necessarily inherited..... all animals, bar the turtle and maybe lobster are taught how to survive by their parents. lions, birds, apes, humans, dolphins etc etc.... evolution doesnt mean you come out into life being able to rule the world

Sounds fancy, but it is mostly wrong. Sure, learning certain things is important, but who gets to survive to achieve adulthood and then gets to procreate is decided by who is the biggest, baddest, smartest of the litter. It's the runt of the litter that will kick the bucket first and it's his enormous brother that will become the alpha male and will add his genes to the gene pool. Just look at lions, boars, pretty much any mammal.

Seems like Cook$ is one of the few here that understands what I was getting at here. Humanity is now at the point that the "prime" specimens are breeding in smaller numbers than the specimens who would have been eaten by the sabre toothed tiger or trampled by a pissed off mammoth in the olden days, before they even had a chance to breed. It's like the silverbacks have stopped making lots of babies and the weedy ones are taking over.

 

[Dup]

yaaa i get that surely your statement shows we arent evolving then Were just lucky enough to have technology to push the weedy ones along

 

[Cook$]

I can only see one solution, me and Buddha have to breed.