Evolution Shmevolution

[York99]

1. My thinking was that because there is so much evidence from the past, that there might be some intelligent speculation on the future. That's what they do in finance, so I thought maybe some similar principles could be employed in genetics.

2. Of course, but even in the past few hundred years, isn't there evidence that we're getting taller as a human race? That's at least something, right?

3. Please don't do homework on my account. You've got enough going on, I'm sure.

1. we can't really speculate on which genes will mutate and how they will mutate. we don't understand enough about dna and proteins yet to really be able to predict this well. surprising, huh? i'll give a better answer to this when i'm not due in class in 7 minutes.

2. that's mostly due to better nutrition, not evolution.

3. naw, there's not much to do since i'm leaving school. and i think this stuff is fun and interesting, anyway.

1. "can't" or "won't"? Lazy geneticists.

2. I'd like to go back in time and be a freakish god... then introduce basketball to the Egyptians so I can school them. Then I'd go find Shaq's ancestors and dunk right over their little heads. Man, I'm the lamest time traveler in all of sci fi.

3. If you think it's fun and interesting, you should make a career out of it... oh, right. sorry.

[shando]

2. I'd like to go back in time and be a freakish god... then introduce basketball to the Egyptians so I can school them. Then I'd go find Shaq's ancestors and dunk right over their little heads. Man, I'm the lamest time traveler in all of sci fi.

I smell a TV pilot in the making.

[York99]

2. I'd like to go back in time and be a freakish god... then introduce basketball to the Egyptians so I can school them. Then I'd go find Shaq's ancestors and dunk right over their little heads. Man, I'm the lamest time traveler in all of sci fi.

I smell a TV pilot in the making.

I'm really not a sci-fi fan, but I loved Quantum Leap and probably fantasize about that every few days still. I would love to make a Quantum Leap knock off but not necessarily a parody of going through time and well, here's the intro:

Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Justin York stepped into the Quantum Accelerator and vanished. He awoke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own and driven by an unknown force annoy history. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time who appears in the form of a hologram that only Justin can see and hear. And so Dr. York finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to annoy people without upsetting the space/time continuum, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the boyfriend of a really hot lady.

[Spaztique]

Some people beleive that, due to the human's heightened state of awareness, culture, thought processes, autonomy, technology, and other things like that, humans are no longer affected by evolution, or at least natural selection on a biological level.

[sara farr]

OR



OR

[Deano]

Uh, there's a little scientific documentary released a couple years ago that clears up any mystery about the future of the human race..

X-Men The Last Stand yo!

[Rev. Jordan T. Maxwell]

Uh, there's a little scientific documentary released a couple years ago that clears up any mystery about the future of the human race..

X-Men The Last Stand yo!

the future of the human race is a poorly structured mash up of two superior storylines with stilted dialogue and gratuitous special effects that do nothing to service the story while introducing and subsequently abandoning far too many characters and subplots?

the horror...the horror...

[Deano]

Uh, there's a little scientific documentary released a couple years ago that clears up any mystery about the future of the human race..

X-Men The Last Stand yo!

the future of the human race is a poorly structured mash up of two superior storylines with stilted dialogue and gratuitous special effects that do nothing to service the story while introducing and subsequently abandoning far too many characters and subplots?

the horror...the horror...

Haha. Maybe, but I'd have watched it in silence for Rebecca Romijn alone. Then again, I'm more of a specimen of DE-evolution!

[Rev. Jordan T. Maxwell]

Haha. Maybe, but I'd have watched it in silence

actually, that might've helped.

[Spots]

While on the subject, Sagan's "Dragons of Eden" is a remarkable book!

[mpbrockman]

While on the subject, Sagan's "Dragons of Eden" is a remarkable book!

If you liked that, try his "The Demon-Haunted World" - especially Chapter 12. It contains as fine a basic primer on logic and rhetorical fallacies as I've ever read.

[Deano]

Haha. Maybe, but I'd have watched it in silence

actually, that might've helped.

Toosh

[Spots]

if anything, advanced medicine, robotic limbs, artificial organs, and so on, hold back evolution by enabling people who might otherwise be weeded out of the gene pool to live and reproduce.

This isn't true at all. There's no such thing as "holding back evolution", only changing the environment so that new adaptations occur. Everything you listed (although created by humans) is an environmental change. Society itself is an environmental change. This is where you might take into account social evolution and biological change within the neocortex.


(sigh, and so I respond to 2007)

[Rev. Jordan T. Maxwell]

FROM THE FUTURE!!!

[Spots]

We weren't the first species that learned how to engineer environmental changes either. Earlier ancestors of humans changed the environment to their benefit.... but certainly not to the extent of humans with their vast medical technology, economics, and socio political inventions.


Remember not all humans made spears. Only the ones who ate :)

That is precisely how humans developed their abstract brain more and more over time.