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 Diploid
Cuban
Registered: 01/09/03
Posts: 19,274
Loc: Rabbit Hole
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 Humans Are Evolving More Rapidly Than Thought Possible 
#5500557 - 04/10/06 05:24 PM (18 years, 10 days ago) |
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http://www.wired.com/news/politics/lifescience/0,70613-0.html?tw=wn_technology_1
By Annalee Newitz|
02:00 AM Apr, 10, 2006
New evidence suggests humans are evolving more rapidly -- and more recently -- than most people thought possible. But for some radical evolutionists, Homo sapiens isn't morphing quickly enough.
"People like to think of modern human biology, and especially mental biology, as being the result of selections that took place 100,000 years ago," said University of Chicago geneticist Bruce Lahn. "But our research shows that humans are still under selection, not just for things like disease resistance but for cognitive abilities."
Lahn recently published the results of a study demonstrating that two key genes connected to brain size are currently under rapid selection in populations throughout the globe.
"The jury is still out on what this means because we aren't entirely sure what these genes do," said Lahn. "It's possible they just control size and shape of the brain, rather than cognition. But the data is pretty compelling that the brain is evolving."
Some radical thinkers suggest human evolution needs to move even faster, with a little help from science.
"Biological evolution is too slow for the human species," said Ray Kurzweil, futurist and author of The Singularity Is Near. "Over the next few decades, it's going to be left in the dust."
He may be right, and not just because biotech researchers are racing to rewrite our genomes. Old-school theories that painted evolution as a glacial process have recently come under fire from researchers who see human evolution as a fast-paced and ongoing process.
Their work flies in the face of popular Darwinian theories of human behavior such as those espoused by Harvard University scientist Steven Pinker, whose recent book The Blank Slate takes for granted the idea that Homo sapiens hasn't changed since its long trek out of Africa 100,000 years ago.
Chicago geneticist Lahn is most intrigued by the possibility that cultural factors are involved in brain evolution. "We think some of these new gene variants may be as young as a few thousand years, a period when human culture was changing dramatically," he said. "Maybe these genes are selected not for hunting but because of organized society." He cautioned that this is just a hypothesis, but "recent cultural evolution and biological evolution may be linked."
It may be hard to think of something a few thousand years old as "recent," but from the perspective of evolutionary biology, it's positively contemporary.
"The time scale for a strongly favored mutation to sweep through a population is about 5,000 years," said Jonathan Pritchard, a University of Chicago evolutionary biologist. "It's hard to get an exact estimate for rates of change, but we know that the lactase gene is evolving the fastest in humans. It was new 5,000 years ago and now it's in virtually everybody in Europe."
The lactase gene is what allows humans to metabolize dairy products as adults. It's widely believed to have evolved in response to humans' domestication of dairy animals -- individuals who could enhance their diet with dairy products had such a strong survival advantage that the gene spread at the speed of, well, several thousand generations.
A storm of publicity greeted Pritchard's recent paper on signals of selection across the human genome. The response came in large part because Pritchard and his colleagues had found such overwhelming evidence that many human genes are evolving: not just ones that govern the brain, but also ones associated with reproduction, disease resistance and the ability to process certain kinds of foods.
"I think my work is changing people's ideas about evolution, because now natural selection seems to have continued all the way up to the present day," said Pritchard. "There's no reason to think it stops now."
That's why futurists like Kurzweil are excited about Lahn and Pritchard's work -- it could lay the foundations for a new understanding of evolution that's more tolerant of the idea that humans should intervene in their own genetic transformation.
Lahn is comfortable with this idea. "If there's an evolutionary advantage to be had by using technology, then people will do it," he said. "People are going to start changing the game in evolution in ways Darwin never anticipated."
Trans-humanist pundit James Hughes, author of Citizen Cyborg, thinks it's time to speed up the evolutionary process.
"You can take what nature gave you, but there's no good reason to take nature as a guide for where you should go in the future," Hughes said.
"People are comforted by the slow pace of biological evolution," said Kurzweil. He predicted that "genetic reprogramming" will soon lead to "dramatic evolutionary changes."
Lahn, for his part, is a "moral relativist" on these issues, but does concede: "Human evolution could soon occur at a rate and with a set of rules that may be very different than what the Darwinian model has characterized so far."
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Republican Values:
1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.
4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.
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 SneezingPenis
ACHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!111!
Registered: 01/15/05
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Re: Humans Are Evolving More Rapidly Than Thought Possible [Re: Diploid]
#5500640 - 04/10/06 05:48 PM (18 years, 10 days ago) |
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Kurzweil is the shit!
The Singularity is near!
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Baby_Hitler
Errorist
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Re: Humans Are Evolving More Rapidly Than Thought Possible [Re: Diploid]
#5501309 - 04/10/06 08:36 PM (18 years, 10 days ago) |
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If you think we're evolving rapidly now, just imagine a world with unlimited free crack.
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This space for rent
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pshawny
Mycobian
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Re: Humans Are Evolving More Rapidly Than Thought Possible [Re: Diploid]
#5501806 - 04/10/06 10:50 PM (18 years, 10 days ago) |
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Being as evolved as I am, which may not be much, I made the decision not to read the post. It looked to long and complicated 
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fresh313
journeyman
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Re: Humans Are Evolving More Rapidly Than Thought Possible [Re: pshawny]
#5502359 - 04/11/06 03:55 AM (18 years, 10 days ago) |
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since there is no real natural selection anymore, evolution is very limited, the only evolution would be the choosing of m8's.
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Diploid
Cuban
Registered: 01/09/03
Posts: 19,274
Loc: Rabbit Hole
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Re: Humans Are Evolving More Rapidly Than Thought Possible [Re: fresh313]
#5502404 - 04/11/06 05:07 AM (18 years, 10 days ago) |
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We're still very much under selective pressure. We die from SARS, AIDS, Bird Flu, cancer... the dumb among us end up in jail for speeding with a expired plates and a busted headlight and a kilogram of cocaine in the trunk, the smart ones get high-tech, high-paying jobs that allow them to send their kids to the best schools and get the best medical attention.
The thing is that evolution via natural selective pressures takes place on geologic time scales while engineered evolution happens in one generation and we're the first species able to direct our evolution that way. That's what the article is referring to.
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Republican Values:
1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.
4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero
Registered: 04/27/01
Posts: 23,480
Loc: Caribbean
Last seen: 2 months, 7 days
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Re: Humans Are Evolving More Rapidly Than Thought Possible [Re: Diploid]
#5502552 - 04/11/06 07:06 AM (18 years, 10 days ago) |
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Quote:
the dumb among us end up in jail for speeding with a expired plates and a busted headlight and a kilogram of cocaine in the trunk, the smart ones get high-tech, high-paying jobs that allow them to send their kids to the best schools and get the best medical attention.
At the same time, the less educated tend to breed like rabbits while the more educated tend to have few, if any children.
It is also interesting to think about how many 'unfit' members of the species we save through science and medicine. (I use unfit loosely, not judgmentally.) Think about all the premature babies that have lived to carry on the premature baby genes, etc. Medicine is certainly allowing 'weaker' members of the population to survive and pass on genes where they would have died in the past.
(My wording may be tactless on this subject. I do a lot of work with simulated evolution, and tend to think abstractly on the subject. I use words such as unfit with a scientific mindset. I do not mean these words to be a racial, or judgmental slur.)
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Just another spore in the wind.
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RuNE
bomberman
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Re: Humans Are Evolving More Rapidly Than Thought Possible [Re: Seuss]
#5503395 - 04/11/06 12:41 PM (18 years, 10 days ago) |
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I've actualy pondered on this quite a few times before also.
Since modern medicine has allowed us to 'save' the weaker of the pack, we have essentialy slowed down the evolution process, which dictates that the strongest survive.
...Yet, at the same time, we are now experimenting (and succeeding) with altering genes to better ourselves, including the 'weak' (be it physicaly or mentaly).
We are replacing Nature with Science.
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~Happy sailing~
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero
Registered: 04/27/01
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Re: Humans Are Evolving More Rapidly Than Thought Possible [Re: RuNE]
#5503470 - 04/11/06 01:04 PM (18 years, 10 days ago) |
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A bit over ten years ago I came up with a graph (no claim on originality, only on independent discovery) that plots our ability to destroy all life on earth against an increase in our moral values. As more countries can produce nuclear bombs, and as genetic manipulation becomes easier and easier, there is going to be a point at which the tools needed to wipe out mankind become common place.
The anthrax attack in the US is a good example of this. Fifty years ago this could have only been done by a government. Today it can be done by a very well educated man. It is only going to get easier to create this kind of weapon.
Eventually the two curves will cross, moral values vs ease of wiping out all of mankind, and it isn't gonna be pretty when it does. Bringing us full circle, and back on topic... is mankinds "evolution through science" actually leading us to a dead end or will we be able to cure sickness faster than we create it?
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Just another spore in the wind.
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Shroomism
Space Travellin
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Posts: 66,015
Loc: 9th Dimension 
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Re: Humans Are Evolving More Rapidly Than Thought Possible [Re: Seuss]
#5503503 - 04/11/06 01:14 PM (18 years, 10 days ago) |
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Our technology has long surpassed our spiritual evolution as a species
We must understand the full effects of our actions, on every level.
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Asante
Omnicyclion prophet
Registered: 02/06/02
Posts: 87,330
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Re: Humans Are Evolving More Rapidly Than Thought Possible [Re: Seuss]
#5503825 - 04/11/06 02:27 PM (18 years, 10 days ago) |
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Quote:
there is going to be a point at which the tools needed to wipe out mankind become common place.
That point has been crossed.
In 2002 (or 2003) a polio virus was entirely synthesized using materials bought on the internet, just to show it can be done.
Apparently they bought a DNA sequencer off eBay and downloaded the polio genome.
Throw ten years at it and it's a serious threat.
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Omnicyclion.org
higher knowledge starts here
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RuNE
bomberman
Registered: 09/23/00
Posts: 2,331
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Re: Humans Are Evolving More Rapidly Than Thought Possible [Re: Asante]
#5504633 - 04/11/06 05:59 PM (18 years, 9 days ago) |
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Holy shit. 
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~Happy sailing~
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Darcho
PhysicallyDetermined
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Re: Humans Are Evolving More Rapidly Than Thought Possible [Re: Shroomism]
#5505005 - 04/11/06 07:31 PM (18 years, 9 days ago) |
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Quote:
Shroomism said:
Our technology has long surpassed our spiritual evolution as a species
We must understand the full effects of our actions, on every level.
Exactly. It is this line of thought that leads to The Question Concerning Technology.
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defcheck
Stranger
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Re: Humans Are Evolving More Rapidly Than Thought Possible [Re: Darcho]
#5507156 - 04/12/06 09:08 AM (18 years, 9 days ago) |
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It may sound fucked up but the only way to save ourselves is to whack the majority of the population. The majority being gang members, rapists, murderers, and pedophiles, not to mention the just plain stupid.
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