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Implications of Evolutionary Delay

rousseau

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Popular scientific thought tells us that there is a delay in biological evolution. Most people today are hard-wired for life in the Savannah, hunting and gathering, and not a complex, modern world.

So what kind of implications do and will we see in our world due to being mal-adapted to the society we live in?
 
Popular scientific thought tells us that there is a delay in biological evolution. Most people today are hard-wired for life in the Savannah, hunting and gathering, and not a complex, modern world.

So what kind of implications do and will we see in our world due to being mal-adapted to the society we live in?

If you are raised in a society you adapt to it.

The child like the young cat or dog will adapt to it's environment.

People can get too old to adapt anymore, but that is not universal. There are people in the eighties doing fine texting with cell phones. Many have degraded memory systems that don't allow much new learning however. That can occur at any age though.
 
Popular scientific thought tells us that there is a delay in biological evolution. Most people today are hard-wired for life in the Savannah, hunting and gathering, and not a complex, modern world.

So what kind of implications do and will we see in our world due to being mal-adapted to the society we live in?

Evolution requires an environmental stresser to trigger, doesn't it? How are you going to have that happen when human beings are biologically one of the most successful species on the planet? Life extension gene modding will be a thing long before we need to worry about our species evolving naturally.
 
I don't know if it has been established that we are ill adapted to the modern world (with the exclusion of WWII, which I think was mankind's learning moment regarding technology and death... because apparently that lesson wasn't learned by the end of WWI). That would have likely came out in the early 20th century.
Popular scientific thought tells us that there is a delay in biological evolution. Most people today are hard-wired for life in the Savannah, hunting and gathering, and not a complex, modern world.

So what kind of implications do and will we see in our world due to being mal-adapted to the society we live in?
Evolution requires an environmental stresser to trigger, doesn't it?
Not trigger, but perhaps matter. A lot of evolutionary adaptations are neutral until they become positive or negative with an environmental shift.
 
Rousseau said:
Popular scientific thought tells us that there is a delay in biological evolution. Most people today are hard-wired for life in the Savannah, hunting and gathering, and not a complex, modern world.

So what kind of implications do and will we see in our world due to being mal-adapted to the society we live in?
Tribalism. Authoritarianism. War.

Evolution requires an environmental stresser to trigger, doesn't it? How are you going to have that happen when human beings are biologically one of the most successful species on the planet? Life extension gene modding will be a thing long before we need to worry about our species evolving naturally.
Our success remains to be seen. The Bubonic plague bacterium probably seemed successful the first or second day of infection.

If you are raised in a society you adapt to it.

The child like the young cat or dog will adapt to it's environment.

People can get too old to adapt anymore, but that is not universal. There are people in the eighties doing fine texting with cell phones. Many have degraded memory systems that don't allow much new learning however. That can occur at any age though.
We can adapt to a degree, but our underlying Nature will out. Our psychology is hard-wired for a tribal, hunter-gatherer existence. You can paper over it with a "civilized" veneer, but all it takes is a scratch and the inner ape will emerge.
 
Popular scientific thought tells us that there is a delay in biological evolution. Most people today are hard-wired for life in the Savannah, hunting and gathering, and not a complex, modern world.
Savannah is a nice and quaint enough town, but "hardwired" is a bit much. :)
bigstock-SAVANNAH-GEORGIA--JANUARY---94450370.jpg

 
Popular scientific thought tells us that there is a delay in biological evolution. Most people today are hard-wired for life in the Savannah, hunting and gathering, and not a complex, modern world.

So what kind of implications do and will we see in our world due to being mal-adapted to the society we live in?

Aren't we actually adapting our environment to suit us? We may not always do the best job of it, but I think that is what all modernization efforts boil down to. If that is the case, why would we need to evolve to adapt to the environment we are already adapting to suit ourselves?
 
Popular scientific thought tells us that there is a delay in biological evolution. Most people today are hard-wired for life in the Savannah, hunting and gathering, and not a complex, modern world.

So what kind of implications do and will we see in our world due to being mal-adapted to the society we live in?

Sounds like you're talking about punctuated equilibrium.
 
Popular scientific thought tells us that there is a delay in biological evolution. Most people today are hard-wired for life in the Savannah, hunting and gathering, and not a complex, modern world.

So what kind of implications do and will we see in our world due to being mal-adapted to the society we live in?

Aren't we actually adapting our environment to suit us? We may not always do the best job of it, but I think that is what all modernization efforts boil down to. If that is the case, why would we need to evolve to adapt to the environment we are already adapting to suit ourselves?

^This.
 
Popular scientific thought tells us that there is a delay in biological evolution. Most people today are hard-wired for life in the Savannah, hunting and gathering, and not a complex, modern world.

So what kind of implications do and will we see in our world due to being mal-adapted to the society we live in?

Evolution requires an environmental stresser to trigger, doesn't it? How are you going to have that happen when human beings are biologically one of the most successful species on the planet? Life extension gene modding will be a thing long before we need to worry about our species evolving naturally.

All you need for evolution is differential rates of reproduction. Just because the species at large is doing fine doesn't mean that certain traits cannot be selected for. Besides, one of the most important environmental triggers is other humans.
 
Popular scientific thought tells us that there is a delay in biological evolution. Most people today are hard-wired for life in the Savannah, hunting and gathering, and not a complex, modern world.

So what kind of implications do and will we see in our world due to being mal-adapted to the society we live in?

Aren't we actually adapting our environment to suit us? We may not always do the best job of it, but I think that is what all modernization efforts boil down to. If that is the case, why would we need to evolve to adapt to the environment we are already adapting to suit ourselves?

It's not that we need to evolve, but rather that our current biological state is creating very specific environmental and social conditions which will have a big impact on our future.

Consider that human pre-history is a couple million years, and that civilisation is a few thousand years old. That represents very new and important evolutionary pressures.

With that said, in terms of biology it's highly plausible that modernity represents a major turning point in our history. What comes after this point is less clear to me.
 
Popular scientific thought tells us that there is a delay in biological evolution. Most people today are hard-wired for life in the Savannah, hunting and gathering, and not a complex, modern world.

So what kind of implications do and will we see in our world due to being mal-adapted to the society we live in?

Sounds like you're talking about punctuated equilibrium.

Maybe a bit of that, but mostly all possible effects of the pre-historic psyche living in the modern world.

It's like on the one hand we have some people with very good ideas (democracy, science, atheism), but progress and efficacy is near impossible because most people are at best, predictably irrational.
 
Popular scientific thought tells us that there is a delay in biological evolution. Most people today are hard-wired for life in the Savannah, hunting and gathering, and not a complex, modern world.

So what kind of implications do and will we see in our world due to being mal-adapted to the society we live in?

Aren't we actually adapting our environment to suit us? We may not always do the best job of it, but I think that is what all modernization efforts boil down to. If that is the case, why would we need to evolve to adapt to the environment we are already adapting to suit ourselves?
How about with global warming? We could be certainly changing our environment, but this hardly looks like it is to suit us.
 
Evolution requires an environmental stresser to trigger, doesn't it? How are you going to have that happen when human beings are biologically one of the most successful species on the planet? Life extension gene modding will be a thing long before we need to worry about our species evolving naturally.

All you need for evolution is differential rates of reproduction. Just because the species at large is doing fine doesn't mean that certain traits cannot be selected for. Besides, one of the most important environmental triggers is other humans.

Yeah. Once the last common human tribe began to break up ~250K years ago, each new tribe encountered different environments and passed on new/adaptive traits to its progeny. That includes cognitive adaptions, and likely explains why some areas of the world continue to lag behind despite having access to the same knowledge and information as the developed world. Add to that the disparate admixing with other ancient human groups - Neanderthals, Denisovans, etc.

C641spvV4AAxAyv.jpg


https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2017/02/20/109678.full.pdf
 
Aren't we actually adapting our environment to suit us? We may not always do the best job of it, but I think that is what all modernization efforts boil down to. If that is the case, why would we need to evolve to adapt to the environment we are already adapting to suit ourselves?
How about with global warming? We could be certainly changing our environment, but this hardly looks like it is to suit us.

Global Warming is an unintended consequence of modernization to our global environment. I am referring to intentional changes we have been making to our more immediate environment. We produce electricity to allow us to light up the night, as well as heat and cool our homes, so that we are not as susceptible to changing weather conditions. We continually improve the way we build our homes, also protecting us from those changing weather conditions. We have developed methods of travel that allow us to quickly get from place to place, which helps in many emergency situations. Computers help us to perform tasks more quickly and more precisely. The list goes on and on. We don't need to adapt to those things, those are things we made to help us adapt, and we improve and adapt them to better suit our needs each time we iterate upon them.

As I said, we don't always do the best job of it, so consequences like Global Warming do result. When we notice that unintended consequences are resulting, we do work to correct them, eventually. I feel positive about our ability to address Global Warming, and hopefully we will be able to do that before it gets out of hand. If we don't, we may have created a situation to which we will need to adapt or go extinct. Until then, I think we have worked more to reduce evolutionary pressure upon our species, rather than increasing that pressure through modernization.
 
How about with global warming? We could be certainly changing our environment, but this hardly looks like it is to suit us.

Global Warming is an unintended consequence of modernization to our global environment.
It by far isn't unintended. We have already seen for thousands of years that humans can make a significant impact on the environment, both good and bad, so of course that easily multiplies as we constantly grow in population.
 
Global Warming is an unintended consequence of modernization to our global environment.
It by far isn't unintended. We have already seen for thousands of years that humans can make a significant impact on the environment, both good and bad, so of course that easily multiplies as we constantly grow in population.

You think Global Warming has been intentionally caused by humans? That's a new one on me.

And just a couple of days ago you said you had no belief in Global Warming.

There are beliefs, and then there are crackpot theories...
 
How about with global warming? We could be certainly changing our environment, but this hardly looks like it is to suit us.

Global Warming is an unintended consequence of modernization to our global environment. I am referring to intentional changes we have been making to our more immediate environment. We produce electricity to allow us to light up the night, as well as heat and cool our homes, so that we are not as susceptible to changing weather conditions. We continually improve the way we build our homes, also protecting us from those changing weather conditions. We have developed methods of travel that allow us to quickly get from place to place, which helps in many emergency situations. Computers help us to perform tasks more quickly and more precisely. The list goes on and on. We don't need to adapt to those things, those are things we made to help us adapt, and we improve and adapt them to better suit our needs each time we iterate upon them.

As I said, we don't always do the best job of it, so consequences like Global Warming do result. When we notice that unintended consequences are resulting, we do work to correct them, eventually. I feel positive about our ability to address Global Warming, and hopefully we will be able to do that before it gets out of hand. If we don't, we may have created a situation to which we will need to adapt or go extinct. Until then, I think we have worked more to reduce evolutionary pressure upon our species, rather than increasing that pressure through modernization.

We haven't reduced evolutionary pressures, we have changed what they are. Changes in the genetics of a population don't always mean that people are reacting to a challenge to their survival. It could also just mean a changes in the people who are reproducing.

For instance, if due to our social adaptations we're better at keeping low-skilled people alive, and low-skilled people produce more children than high-skilled people, then the composition of the population could theoretically change over time.

Or there's global warming, this is already having an impact on agricultural, geography, and the world's ecosystems. Maybe we will react to it and control it, but it will still most definitely have implications on our future.

To me, one of the biggest implications of evolutionary delay is the failure of modern democracy. Our political systems are not rational or even very moral, and this has a big impact on the world's ability to react to things like global warming, automation, and other threats to the general well being of humanity. We can do our best, but ultimately our political systems are at best meddling and a little corrupt, and at worst completely dysfunctional. Of course this will change over time, but probably not fast enough.

Ironically, if we do react quickly enough to global warming it's probably going to be due to the free-market and where future profit lies.
 
It by far isn't unintended. We have already seen for thousands of years that humans can make a significant impact on the environment, both good and bad, so of course that easily multiplies as we constantly grow in population.

You think Global Warming has been intentionally caused by humans?
Of course, if real.
That's a new one on me.
Hardly. When we were primitive in the cave, smoke from a campfire caused us to cough and choke, so we knew to stay enough away. Yet when people started smoking, they coughed and choked also, but since it supposedly had something extra about it, they kept experimenting with it until they got it so-called right. We are almost continually being warned of something, but practically only the wise realize to take heed way ahead of time.

And just a couple of days ago you said you had no belief in Global Warming.
Right, but I also said that it doesn't mean it isn't true either.

There are beliefs, and then there are crackpot theories...
Simple observation.
 
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