Humans stop evolving?

[GeneralMotors]

its scary how rich and sucessful people normally choose not to have children whilst lower classes have large families..

However.. higher class people aren't necessarily smarter or better genetically :P

[maikeru]

I don't find it scary at all. It's more a matter of what people can and will allow themselves. There are too many of us--smart, pretty, successful, or not--in this world. As things are, the world cannot contain us all without dire consequences now and worse ahead.

Whether people choose to have more or less children often depends on the circumstances they are in and what their priorities are--i.e., what they can and will bear and where they can direct their resources. One of my friends in Italy would like to have several children and raise a large family, but he and his girlfriend cannot maintain more than one or two children, with their current income and living standards (in a small apartment). Any more children would place them under dangerous financial burden. If you live on a farm and need more labor, having more children might make more sense, as it did in the old days when people were colonizing or farming large tracts of land. You provide your own employment, food, etc. If you live on government welfare and have polygynist relationships, as some (strange) polygamists do in the "Four Corners" area of the US Southwest, you may even support dozens of children at no serious detriment to yourself (and a lot of detriment to the taxpayers--this is known as scamming the government).

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by InfiniteNow

Not 100% relevant to the thread, but I can't keep from laughing every time I see this. I shared it somewhere else recently, but if you missed it, check it out. ...

Way too funny. Ought to be illegal. Good catch, IN.

Pyro

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by InfiniteNow

Not 100% relevant to the thread, but I can't keep from laughing every time I see this. I shared it somewhere else recently, but if you missed it, check it out.

I saw this post at work initially (no Youtube allowed!). I finally remembered to revisit it tonight. I'm very glad I did.

"He's the dick to the dawk to the phd. He's smarter than you, he's got a science degree. Dick to the dawk to the phd. He's still smarter than you, he studied biology."

So true.

[Luis]

well, come to think of it, there are so many variants of species for insects, plants, germs that it seems that humanity has reached the end of its evolution; i mean not like its happening now, but i wonder what would it be like...

[CraigD]

Hi Luis – welcome to hypography!

Originally Posted by Luis

well, come to think of it, there are so many variants of species for insects, plants, germs that it seems that humanity has reached the end of its evolution;

Check out this 12/14/07 Slate article, mentioned in post #24 of this thread.

The gist of it – and the mainstream scientific consensus on this thread’s title question, “have humans stopped evolving”, is that quite the opposite of having stopped evolving, humans are evolving more rapidly since we became civilized – the last 40,000, and especially the last 10,000 years – than before. Part of this is simply because there’re more of us, and more individuals = more opportunities for genetic change, but another is that it appears, via civilization, we’re creating more selection pressures than unassisted nature did in the previous 100,000 years, mostly in the for of changed diet and high population density.

Originally Posted by Luis

i mean not like its happening now, but i wonder what would it be like...

It – evolution – doesn’t seem to be happening, because compared to most changes we experience – social, economic, etc. – evolutionary change happens very slowly, requiring at least a generation – about 20 years for humans – for any selection to occur. None the less, research like that described in the Slate article indicated that we’re continuing to evolve.

What’s changed very recently – dramatically since about 1960 – is that we’re increasingly able to understand with some amount or exactitude the underlying biology of how we’re evolving – “natural selection” may be even more augmented by “unnatural selection”. Given humankind's propensity and apparent love of change, I find it hard to imagine how this could result in anything but even more dramatic increasing in the rate of evolution, not only in humans, but in all terrestrial ecosystems.

In short, the ride, slow-motion one that its been so far, strikes me as far from over, and most likely just getting to the really wild part.